Challenge Theories
by Chaos Dragon
Summary: My take on the 100 Drabble Challenge as issued on deviantART. Written, obviously. Romance, angst, drama, tragedy, and sneak peaks at various ideas sitting on my hard drive. Challenged by Me The Anon One.
1. Blood

17. Blood

**Excerpted from **_**Be Careful What You Wish For**_

Sam winced as Danny dotted the blood along the side of her body. Her. God, it was still so hard to wrap her mind around the whole situation. Somehow it seemed so unreal that it _was_ real. She closed her eyes against the pain and tried to forget the fight, the pain, the way the blade had cut into her. And then Danny dabbed at a particularly deep spot and tears pricked her eyes as she struggled not to cry out.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "But I have to make sure it's clean."

"I know," she replied as she bit her lip against the alcohol soaked gauze that probed deeper. "Is this what it's like for you?"

Lavender eyes glanced up, darker with worry than she had expected. "Every day," he replied as he dropped the blood soaked gauze in her wastebasket and picked up another, soaking it with more alcohol before moving to the shallow end of the wound.

Sam winced back against it, hating the way this body reacted to the feather light touch of her own fingers. Out of control, and the pain was the only thing that saved it from being truly embarrassing. She whimpered before ducking her face into a pillow and giving in to the need to cry. How did he do this? Day after day, and how many times had she patched him up from injuries just like this, and some even worse.

And he never made a sound as she did it.

And her… She was crying into the pillow and trying not to scream as the first prick of the needle threaded through the already sensitive skin, then dragged heavy thread through in an agony that had her nearly unconscious. More blood, she could feel it soaking down her side and making the waistband of her jeans sticky and stiff as it began to dry.

Another prick, another silent scream into the pillow. Another, another, and somehow she sat still until it was done and over with and Danny was laying the needle and remaining thread down as he took up yet another alcohol covered swatch of gauze to dab yet again. Fire raced down her side, and her vision dulled, silence roaring in her ears so that she could barely hear his soft, pained, "I'm sorry's," as he covered the wound with fresh gauze and wrapped it around her waist.

He was done, the pain was fading, and for a moment all Sam could see was the blood on slender hands.

---

**I hadn't originally intended to add a note to this, but I figured I might as well add to so that this would make more sense to readers. Go back and read it again VERY, VERY carefully, and pay attention to the semantics.**

**Done? Okay. Now, if you figured out that Sam is in Danny's body, and Danny is in Sam's body, you are a good reader and get a cookie. Chocolate chunk or peanut butter. Your choice. :D It's from a longer fic I've yet to write, so no worries. It'll happen.**


	2. Abandoned

38. Abandoned

**Andy's Tale, 1**

His thoughts danced around the small black velvet box that was tucked away in the desk drawer in his room. It was hard not to think about it when Sam was sitting with him, snuggled against them, and the television was turned down low so that they could just enjoy the silence with each other. He'd been with her for more than four years and, for the life of him, Danny couldn't figure out why it had taken him so long to decide to ask Sam to marry him. It was the only thing he wanted anymore.

He'd almost asked her at the massive birthday cum graduation party his parents had thrown for him. He was beginning to think that it had been so huge because they'd wondered at times if he'd ever graduate high school, much less come out of college in the top five percent of his class. But he had, and here he was. On his own, in his own apartment, with the girl he loved snuggled against him.

Nothing could ruin it.

Of course, the knocking at the door could interrupt it, and Danny glanced back at the it from where they were sitting, annoyed as Sam shifted lazily against him and then away. "You'd better answer that. It's probably Tucker."

Danny shrugged and yawned as he stood, threading his way around the couch and down the hall to the door. But it wasn't Tucker. In fact, it wasn't anyone he knew. Someone middle-aged, a man with graying hair and studious glasses that covered serious green eyes. He wore a long coat and carried a briefcase, and instantly the hair on the back of Danny's neck started to rise.

"Can I help you?" he asked as he heard Sam getting up off of the couch and padding quietly up behind him, to peek around his side.

"Daniel Fenton?" the strange man asked, and when Danny nodded he handed Danny a folded piece of paper. And before Danny even opened it to read he added, "I'll need your signature before you can take custody of your son."

"What?" The word came from two startled mouths, and at that moment Danny saw something he hadn't seen before.

A face peeked from behind the man, a child, a boy. Even without looking Danny could see something familiar in the set of the child's jaw, the shape of his face beneath an unruly mop of light blond hair. But it was the eyes that hit him in the gut. Clear, brilliant, bright blue eyes that Danny stared at in the mirror every morning.

The boy took one more step out and Danny paused to consider the bruising along the side of his face, the cast at his wrist, small and white.

"Danny?" Sam's voice, soft and frightened at his shoulder. All Danny could do was stare at the little boy who had his eyes.

---

**Inspired from a drabble written by Me The Anon One. Chapter 6, **_**Keeping Secrets**_**, of her **_**100 Drabble Challenge**_**. With her permission I've taken the single drabble and made into something else.**


	3. Pen and Paper

81. Pen and Paper

**Andy's Tale, 2**

Sam was gone. She'd left not long after Danny read through the papers the man from the Department of Children and Families brought him. She'd left right after he'd signed them, the little boy, Andy, sitting quietly on the couch as the adults talked in hushed tones at the small table Danny had in his dining room. Talked. The man had talked. Danny had asked a question, maybe two. Sam had been silent.

Andy. Andrew. His son was named Andrew James Fenton. His mother had done that, and Danny couldn't bring himself to frown at it. It was like she'd known she wasn't going to have much time with him, had wanted to make the transition from having no father to having only a father as easy as possible.

Andy was sleeping, even now as Danny sat on his couch and stared down at the slim white envelope in his hand, his name printed neatly on the outside. Danny had given up his bed, had tucked the five year old into it, all the while trying to figure out who the hell Elizabeth Thompson was. Not is, was.

She'd died, two days ago, a fatal heart attack while driving Andy to school. The car had flipped, the boy's wrist had been broken, and Danny's sense of stability and the contrived normalcy had shattered because of it. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose, fighting the tension headache that was building. Failing, but not bothering to get up for some aspirin as he worked his thumb along the top of the envelope, ripping it open and pulling a few sheets of plain notebook paper.

_Dear Danny,_

_If you're reading this, then you know about Andy. I know you don't remember about me, and I don't blame you for it. I couldn't blame you for it, even if you thought I was someone else. I took advantage of the situation, and he was my consequence, my blessing. My life._

_Obviously it's over. I assume they'll have told you. I have a heart condition. It's not really a big deal, unless I'm under too much strain and stress. Pregnancy will do that. Delivering will only make it worse. I knew after Andy was born that this day would come eventually. I only hope that it didn't come too soon. I hope that I haven't wrecked your life too badly, but I couldn't bear to let them send Andy to a foster home when you would be the best place for him to go._

_I imagine that you're reading this and wondering what the hell I'm talking about. It's not much. It was one night, less than a few hours. You were drunk. Someone told me that it was because you hadn't asked Sam to the prom and she'd gone with someone else. You were drunk, and I was willing, and the entire time you thought I was her. If she hates you for that, I'm sorry_

_I expect by now you two are married and have kids of your own. I hope she understands. Ask her to treat Andy well. Please. He didn't do anything wrong. I did my best for him, I only ask that you do the same. And her. She'll be his mother now, or the closest thing to it. I know I'm not making much sense, but it's hard writing this. It's hard knowing that my days are numbered, and shorter than I want them to be._

_I know you want to know why I would keep this from you. Why I would never tell you. I can't answer that question. It was a promise I made, and I'm very good at keeping my promises and my secrets._

_He's like you, you know. I've tried to teach him how to handle that part of him, but I can't claim the experience that you have. I'm only human. But Andy knows what he is, what you are. Who you are. I've always told him about you, and I've always told him that his daddy was a hero who would love him very much if he knew about him._

_Please don't make me a liar. Please be the hero he needs in you._

_Always, Star_

Danny closed his eyes after he read the last line, the name barely registering before the paper was crumpled in his hands. Anger, hurt, utter and absolute fear. Emotions that he couldn't control, and none more painful than the dark despair that he was sitting there, reading it alone with no one to talk to, no one to lean on. It hurt, reading it, knowing that the pretty vivacious cheerleader he'd known in high school was dead. Had expected it and faced it bravely.

He didn't know what he felt knowing that Andy was Star's son. Their son. A night that he couldn't remember, a night that he should have remembered. After all, you don't take a girl to bed and forget it like it never happened. But he had. Even now, brain wracking itself for answers, shreds of memories, there was nothing.

He smoothed the paper back open, eyes blurring it as he read it once more.

---

**Inspired from a drabble written by Me The Anon One. Chapter 6, **_**Keeping Secrets**_**, of her **_**100 Drabble Challenge**_**. With her permission I've taken the single drabble and made into something else.**


	4. Trouble Lurking

25. Trouble Lurking

**Excerpted from **_**Hollowpoint**_

The locker room was empty, it was almost quiet. The precinct was always quiet at this time of morning. Danny smirked to himself; the darkest before dawn cliché always popped into his head when he was in this early for no better reason than to work off frustrations of the job. Whoever said police work was easy had never tried being a homicide detective in Chicago.

His hair was still wet, dripping and leaving water beaded along his shoulders as he slung his towel over the locker door and rummaged inside looking for a clean undershirt. His hands found it just as the hair on the back of his neck rose and the chill of a breeze wafted over the water droplets along his shoulders. He straightened, turned curiously. Few people used the precinct's gym this early.

And when he did he found himself staring at the amethyst eyes that had haunted his dreams for twelve years.

"The Captain said I'd find you here," she offered, a white flag of truce.

_Sam._ He wanted to say it, wanted to scream it. But he knew he wouldn't. Instead he addressed her the same way he had since she'd shown up three weeks before. "Manson." Cordial, polite. Never betraying how much it hurt to look at her and know that she didn't know who he was.

"Dan, I wanted to talk to you…" Her voice trailed off, and Danny watched Sam as she took a step towards him, eyes glued to his bare torso.

He hadn't been uncomfortable with his scars in years. In fact, he'd gotten very good at passing them off as badges of the job. Only a handful, maybe two, were from the year he'd walked beat in the rough parts of the city. Everything else… Everything else was from the life he'd left behind. Not that he ever told anyone that. But the way she was looking at him, the second and third and fourth step that brought her close enough to reach out and touch, those nearly frightened him.

And when she did touch him, fingers tracing a pale curving line that ran from mid-chest underneath his left arm, she looked up at him. "I… I know these scars."

He tensed and stayed silent, knowing that anything he said would shatter the fragile peace he'd contrived with her sudden appearance. But he supposed it didn't matter, it couldn't matter, because he could see the shift in her deep lilac eyes as she looked up at him. She knew. She _knew_ and there was no going back.

Sam looked up at him, and Danny fought for breath as he focused his powers to keep from sinking into the floor. "I—You knew me, didn't you?"

_Oh, Sam._

Danny's heart thundered in his chest as he looked down at her and fought with the sudden desire to hold her, to wrap his arms around her and fix the broken and hurt look in her eyes. To kiss her, beg her forgiveness for doing this to her, offer himself up in her place. But that hadn't worked even when he'd tried it. Instead, all he could do was close his eyes and bow his head, trembling beneath her touch.

"Yes," he muttered harshly. "I knew you."


	5. Drowning

91. Drowning

The loud pounding had Sam sitting up out of a dead sleep, eyes wide and half awake as she looked around. There was a span of a few seconds where it dawned on her that it wasn't anywhere near her and, in fact, was from the front door downstairs. Not something she needed to worry about, especially at seven in the morning on a Saturday. No school, no nothing. Just sleep until Danny or tucker called and dragged her out of bed for whatever fun they could cook up.

At least until a ghost ruined it all.

She'd just managed to settle herself back into an almost sleep when the knocking resumed. This time at her door. "Sam? Mrs. Fenton is here to see you," her mother called softly through it.

Again Sam found herself shooting upright. There were too many things that were suddenly wrong in her world. Mrs. Fenton was there to talk to her. The sun was barely risen. And her mother had called her Sam. There was only one thing that Sam could think of as she watched the doorknob turn slowly and saw her mother peek around hesitantly, already wide awake and perfectly coifed to face the day.

_The knew about Danny Phantom._

Somehow Danny's mom had found out, had learned the secret they'd kept for three years. It was so obvious, Danny hadn't been acting anything close to normal for weeks. Months. He was so unstable, especially since the Phoenix incident three months ago. And it had happened, he'd slipped, and now Maddie had come to interrogate her.

"Sam?" the woman asked as she slipped past Sam's mother, closing the door behind her. She looked tired, her hair was mussed and her eyes were bloodshot and red rimmed, as if she'd been crying. "I need to talk to you, Sweetie. Can I sit down?"

Sam nodded numbly, wondering why finding out that Danny was Phantom would make Maddie cry. Sure, he was half dead. But that was it. He was still half alive, and that was what was important. Maybe she felt guilty about chasing him down, hunting him since he'd shown up.

"What's wrong?" Sam finally asked after too much silence with the older woman hunched in on herself at the foot of her bed.

"I wanted to talk to you about Danny, Sam," Maddie finally said, and Sam pulled her legs up close, feeling chills run down her skin.

"What about him?" So cautious, so careful not to give anything away.

"Sam." She was quiet for a moment and Sam was startled to see tears slipping down his mother's face. "We found Danny this morning." The words started a cascade of fear through Sam's mind, and for a moment she couldn't breathe. She turned startling purple eyes on Sam, and whispered, "He killed himself last night."

It was the last thing Sam heard.


	6. Give Up

93. Give Up

**Exodus, 1**

Danny wished he could say that it had been a blur. From the scene of the accident to the ambulance ride to the pain and fear of the emergency room. But it wasn't a blur, it wasn't even close to a blur. It was crystal clear, bloody and fresh in his mind. A series of events that he couldn't forget or erase or even pretend to be detached from. So close to him; too close. And Danny still wasn't sure how it had even happened. On second he'd been fighting the ghost, everything had been going so well. No one had been shooting at him, pr even pointing weapons in his direction, not even his parents. And then…

A lucky shot. Unlucky for him. There was no other explanation for it. He'd barely had time to get the offending ghost in the thermos before he'd lost everything and fell. It had all happened so fast, too fast.

And now he was in the emergency room, standing with his family and friends, watching them. His mother was taking it the worst; he wondered if it had been her who'd managed to hit him at that very last moment. She was in tears, her jumpsuit smeared blue-red with his blood, face streaked with more of it, clean little rivulets made where her tears fell. His father was holding her tightly, like maybe if he held her, comforted her enough, he'd be okay and that horrible noise from inside the trauma room would cut off and everything would go back to normal.

Jazz was there, stoic and trying to be unmoved. But Danny could see her eyes shining as she helped Tucker. Tucker's yellow shirt was streaked with rusty stains, some dry, most still wet and thick on the cotton. His face was dull and dusty, streaked with his own tears as he held on to Sam. Danny tried not to look at her, but it was a fight he was destined to lose. She wasn't hysterical, he thanked god for that. But she was close.

She was covered in his blood, candy-coated with it in a macabre fashion, and Danny knew somehow that she had been the first to his side.

The harsh ringing echoed down the hallway and Sam's breathing hitched as she turned her face into Tucker's shoulder. "I can't lose him," she whispered, more of a plea than a statement, and Danny closed his eyes. "Tuck, I love him."

Words that once would have made Danny's heart leap now only made him sick to his stomach. He reached out to her and bit his lip against the sick feeling inside as his hand slipped through her shoulder. "Tucker," he murmured, knowing that his friend wouldn't hear. "She shouldn't be here."

He turned away and towards the steady beep, the closed doors that his friends and family stood outside of. The doors that led to his future. To his past. Without looking back he stepped through them. There were so many people around him that he could barely see himself where he lay on the table. One of them stepped to the side to grab something silver and painful looking from a rolling table, and Danny wished that the woman hadn't. He didn't like seeing himself injured, but this went beyond.

There was blood. Everywhere, but he'd almost expected that from the state of everyone who'd been waiting outside. What he hadn't expected to see was twisted bones, sharp, gaping wounds along the side of his body he'd seen. The massive silver tubing that was suddenly jammed between two ribs made him gasp in nausea, more so when blood began immediately pouring from it.

"Clear."

Everyone stepped back and Danny had a clear view of someone pressing small white things to his chest, and then his body jerked. The ringing stopped for a moment, and then was back, and Danny's eyes arrowed in on a machine next to them all. A flatline. He knew what that was. He was dead.

"You've fought a long time."

The words startled him. It was the first time anyone had spoken to him since he'd woke next to himself inside the ambulance. "Clockwork," he said softly as he glanced at the ghost where he floated next to Danny, watching as they tried again to restart his heart on the table. For a moment he wondered what Clockwork meant. Three years of ghost fighting wasn't very long. Neither was nearly two hours of fighting for his life, though he wasn't sure if he was actually fighting or not.

Probably not, since the third and fourth tries to restart his heart failed miserably. "Open him up." The words echoed, and Danny chose not to say anything as he watched a silver scalpel flash down the skin of his chest to leave a bloody trail.

"No one will think less of you if you lay down your fight."

Danny closed his eyes against the whir of a saw, the sudden cracking sound. _No one will think less of you._ Without opening his eyes again on the scene, Danny turned and walked away.


	7. Breaking the Rules

50. Breaking the Rules

It had started weeks ago. Months really, if Danny were honest with himself. A cold. A silly, inconsequential cold. Except that it hadn't really been a cold. Three doctors and one trip to Clockwork had proven that, and Danny had learned that his DNA was mutating. Again. And, how embarrassing it had been to have to tell Sam and Jazz, it was because of puberty. Ghostly this time, on top of the normal human thing.

The cold had disappeared as suddenly as it had come, and then all hell broke loose. He'd tried explaining the sudden holes in the couch, the burn spots on walls. His parents thought at first that he'd started smoking, cigarettes or worse, he wasn't sure which. That had flown the coop about the same time they'd had to call a contractor to give him a proper skylight in his room, instead of the smoldering gaping hole he'd shot through his ceiling one morning after a nightmare.

Ectoblasts from the eyes were very cool powers, but damned destructive since he had no control over them.

The puddles all over his room, the house, anywhere he went were equally inexplicable, though he tried. His ice powers had grown, and his ectopowers were countering them at every turn. More havoc wreaked. For two terrifying days he'd had to fake laryngitis because every time he spoke his wail tried to break out. That had been controlled quickly, much more quickly than he'd expected. The leap in its power was easily contained, unlike his other new talents.

Teleportation, telekinesis. Cool, very cool, but awkward for trying to figure out how he'd managed to 'port himself to different parts of the city. And the memorable accident that had sent him to Mexico. He'd stayed for a couple of hours before coming home. And he'd been grounded for disappearing, too, but worth it. He now owned authentic Mexican jumping beans. The telepathy sucked, but it was weak enough that it didn't bother him.

But the dramatic increase in his strength and the sudden appearance of new powers had made a terrible problem that Tucker and Jazz had broken their backs and eyes to find an answer for. And the answer was in the small vial he held in his hands. An Ecto-Inhibitor. Completely not FDA approved, and an almost nauseating mix of various chemicals and proteins, not to mention certain particles of additional DNA from his midmorph DNA sequence, that resulted in a slightly cloudy mixture that inhibited the edges of his powers as he needed.

Which was all the time lately.

Danny sighed as he looked down at his arms. Even with his boosted healing powers there was no hiding the various needle marks. But when he was having to inject himself with the Inhibitor three and four and five times daily just to get through school and dinner, he couldn't expect too much more. He wasn't like Tucker, too afraid of the nurse and braving needles to stay conscious for it. Lucky him. But it wasn't like he even had a choice, either.

A glance confirmed that the stall door was still locked, and Danny expertly looped a rubber band around his arm and rolled it up over his elbow before digging another syringe from in his backpack. The needle was longer than he liked, but beggars couldn't be choosers, not when Jazz was sneaking them out of the doctor's office she was interning at. An extracurricular thing that she hoped looked great on college applications.

Two cc's, enough to last him a few hours, and Danny bit his lip as he slid the needle under the skin and into the vein. It burned, there was no getting around that, not with the ectoplasm that was inside it, and then a door slammed open and Danny nearly dropped the needle as he jerked it back out, watching the fading green power that had danced at his fingers only moments before. Blood trickled and Danny scrambled to shove the vial of Inhibitor and the now used syringe back into his backpack.

But too late, the stall door slammed open, the lock ripped from the fake wood, and Dash Baxter was staring down at him with an evil grin.

"Someone's already ready for some swirlies," he started before his dark blue eyes went wide and Danny sighed in defeat. "Dude, you're doing drugs?"

There was a moment of silence, and then Dash took a step back. Another moment, and Dash had spun around and pounded out at a running yelling for Mr. Lancer as Danny grabbed a piece of toilet paper and wadded it against the pleading pinprick at his elbow. He growled as he shoved the Inhibitor into his backpack, and broke the needle from the syringe without even trying. This, too, was shoved out of sight as Danny heard footsteps pounding towards him.

Then Mr. Lancer was peering in and frowning at the marks on his arms before Danny had a chance to shrug his long sleeved shirt back on. The only thing Danny could think was, _Well, fuck. How am I going to explain this?_


	8. Smile

14. Smile

Today was the day. Years of waiting, of hesitating, of trying and failing, and Danny was finally going to do it. Not tell her he loved her, no. He didn't want to scare her off, but he _was_ going to ask her out. Finally. In fact, he sort of already had, because he'd asked her if she wanted to hang out in the park and talk. Just them, without Tucker or anyone else to get in the way and make him stumble and stutter and turn unbearably red as he wrung the question out of his mouth.

He'd waited for her for less than ten minutes, pleased that he'd made it early, and was watching her when she strolled up to the tree in the park he'd asked her to meet him at. For some reason Danny couldn't seem to catch his breath as he looked at her. She wasn't dressed any differently than she usually dressed on the crisp fall afternoons; jeans, a black t-shirt that seemed to hug her body, her thick black boots.

But still, she was so beautiful that it was almost painful.

"Hey," he said softly, smiling as she dropped to the grass beside him.

Sam smiled. "Hey yourself. You wanted to talk to me about something?"

Trust Sam not to beat around the bush. It was one of the things he loved so much about her. At least he'd expected it and had come prepared. He'd already half thought out how he was going to ask her. Better to plan ahead than to stall when he tried. If he stalled he'd lose his nerve and then he'd crash and burn. Not something he wanted to do, so he'd decided already how he wanted to do it.

"Yeah," he started and took a deep breath, his eyes flitting away from hers as he steadied himself mentally and gathered his courage. "I wanted to know if you wanted to go out sometime." And before she could answer he rushed on, wondering if it was part of the plan, or if his brain and mouth had connected without any type of failsafe against what he was saying.

"I really care about you, Sam," and Danny was sure that he had at least one or two fail safe's in working order. He hadn't blurted out that he loved her, and he hadn't taken the juvenile route of like. No, because like didn't even come close to covering how he cared.

"Danny," she started, and stopped as Danny looked up at her, blue eyes wide and nervous and half frightened.

He could feel it right down into his stomach, this sick nauseating feeling that she'd say no. the not much better feeling that she'd say yes, and the wonderfully frightening things that stirred inside him as he contemplated all of the things that could go right and wrong in a relationship with his best friend, the girl he loved and wanted to be with.

She licked her lips and looked away. "I'd like to say yes," she said, and Danny's stomach twisted. She'd like to. But…

"But," and his heart dropped at the suddenly expected but, "I can't." When she looked back at him her eyes were shiny and purple and Danny hated the pity and hurt she was giving him in those expressive eyes of hers. "Tucker asked me out last week. I said yes."

Oh.

"Oh," was all he could say for a long time. It hurt, more than he wanted to admit, much more than he wanted to feel, knowing that Sam had said yes to someone else. And Tucker… Maybe he'd been wrong to think that she might have liked him a little, that little bit that had made him want to take that risk, made him overcome that irrational fear.

He had to have been wrong. She was going out with Tucker, and he'd been wrong. He should have listened to that quiet little voice that had warned him against it. It would have been safer, hurt less. But she didn't have to know. That thought ripped through his mind and forced a smile onto his face as he looked at her and saw the worry, the nerves, the fear and discomfort written loudly on her delicate face.

"That's great," he said, wondering who exactly was speaking for him, because that voice was far to steady to be his. "I'm sure you'll be happy together."

"Really?" she asked, looking over at him, her forehead furrowed as she tried not to frown.

"Yeah," Danny said, and smiled. "I want you guys to be happy, and if that means together, then… Then I'm fine with that." He smiled again.

Smiling had never hurt so much.


	9. Questioning

16. Questioning

"Hey." The words were soft, but lately he couldn't find another way to talk to Sam. She'd gotten so thin, and so much more pale than she normally was. It seemed like she'd been sick ever since graduation. Or at least it hadn't started very long after. A graduation that he'd missed because he was dealing with Vlad and his minions.

Yet one more way the older halfa was still making life miserable for him. It wasn't like he hadn't already found a million ways to do it, but it had hurt to miss his own graduation and it wasn't something Danny was going to forgive Vlad for. Not that he was forgiving him for anything; it was one of the reasons why said billionaire was still locked in a thermos beneath Danny's bed nearly four months after the fact.

She smiled up at him looking half asleep, and for a moment Danny wondered what it would be like to have her smiling at him like that every morning. But he firmly beat the wistful thought down as he dropped to the bench beside her. "You said you wanted to tell me something. You sounded upset," he offered worriedly as she knotted her hands on her lap.

"Yeah," she said quietly. "It's kind of important, and I wanted you to hear it from me instead of someone else."

"What's wrong?" Danny shifted on the bench. "Who would I hear it from? It's not like anyone from high school goes here."

It was true enough, most of the people they'd known had opted to leave Amity Park for bigger and better things. Universities in far off cities of hustle and bustle. Even Tucker had abandoned the city, though he came back every chance he could. But there was no way Danny was going to let Tucker miss a full ride at MIT for the daily trauma of fighting ghosts. In fact, as far as Danny knew, he and Sam were the only seniors who hadn't tried to go anywhere _but_ UI-Amity Park.

"It's, um, pretty big news," she offered quietly. "Not something you'll hear everyday." The tone of her voice was a warning that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. "I didn't mean for it to happen. I really didn't, it was an accident, and I'm not even sure I wanted to in the first place but—"

"Sam," Danny said as he laid his hand over her mouth to stop her babbling. She turned frightened lavender eyes up to him and he was surprised and more than a little afraid to see her nearly in tears. "Just tell me." He took his hand away and watched as she closed her eyes.

"I'm pregnant."

There were several minutes when Danny could only stare at her silently, knowing that his mouth was hanging open. He figured that, in that moment, if he'd had a dictionary and looked up the definition for shocked, it would have his picture beside it. But there wasn't really anything he could do differently. She was right, it was big news, and certainly something he hadn't thought to hear fro her often. Even if in his most secret thoughts he wished, sometimes, that one day she would say those words to him.

But at least in those wishful thinkings she was telling him because it was his. And now she was saying it to him, and he hadn't even known she was dating anyone.

He swallowed once and breathed for a moment, trying to find his voice again before asking, "Who?"

"Tucker." The name was wrung from her lips in a painful whisper as the tears he'd seen finally spilled over and began to trickle down her so pale cheeks. And Danny's heart froze in his chest.

"It wasn't—It didn't—Oh god. I can't say this, it won't sound right now matter what," she was stumbling over the words as they poured out and Danny died quietly beside her. "It was after graduation, and, god, Danny, it didn't mean anything. It was just… an experiment, it didn't mean—I don't—"

"Stop." His voice this time, and so much quieter than anything she'd said. He shook his head and closed his eyes as he turned his face from her trying to hide the hurt, the pain, the fact that if he didn't get away from her _right then_ he was going to start crying. Hell, he knew he would. But not in front of her.

"If you had to experiment with one of your best friends, why couldn't it have been me?" He paused for a second, his breath hitching in his chest painfully as he tried to breath around the lump in his throat. "I'm the one in love with you."

He didn't stop to think about the pain on her face, or the tears on her cheeks. Instead, Danny stood and turned and walked away.


	10. Kick in the Head

58. Kick in the Head

"We should wait for the pizza." Sam was adamant as she dropped down onto the couch next to Danny.

He shrugged and shot a smile at Tucker. "If you want to wait an hour and fifteen minutes, fine. But I want to watch it right now."

Sam snorted as Jazz tossed a bag of M&M's her way. "I could have TiVo'd it, you know."

"And then it wouldn't have been so fun," Danny said as he pressed play. "It's tradition, Sam. _Dr. Who_, my house, Friday nights. Tradition."

And so it had been, for the entire season, because none of them ever managed to watch it when it aired on Sunday nights. That was mostly because Sam was riding herd on Danny and Tucker to force them to do their homework before school on Monday, and she always complained that she had to wait an entire week to watch the newest episode because of them. At least her complaints were more affectionate than not. Danny knew that she was doing her best to help him and Tucker prepare for the midterms that were only weeks away, and then the finals that would be their last set of high school tests.

"I really hope that Rose and the Doctor get together," Danny heard Jazz murmur to Tucker, and he rolled his eyes as the credits started rolling and he hit fast forward.

Blurring images of the stars, the characters, the show itself, and then a commercial that Danny happily zipped through before hitting play just in time. Rose and the Doctor were on screen and his attention was fully absorbed by it. And then the tape skipped, and annoyed groans rode the living room as Danny arched an eyebrow as it settled back into proper order, and the world of Dr. Who was normal again.

Except that the tape suddenly skipped again, and then blanked into snow.

"I thought you taped it," Sam said as she tugged the remote from Danny's hands. Jazz and Tucker were glaring at the screen and Danny, and he could only shake his head.

"I _did_ tape it! I swear I did, it was a new tape."

"Then where is it?" Sam asked before the snow flickered on the screen.

"Oh my god."

None of them would ever be able to figure it out, who exactly had said it. Sam was sure it was her, and Tucker and Jazz the same. Danny somehow thought it had been all of them, and his mother. Because where Dr. Who should have been playing on the tape, Dr. Who had gone the way of being recorded over, and Danny's parents were starring in a home movie of their own.

He felt distinctly lightheaded as the blood drained from his face and his mother's voice came through the speakers murmuring, "Oh, Jackie, yes," and he started pressing the stop button on the remote.

Except he didn't have the remote, Sam had the remote, and she was just as shocked as he was. It took him a few seconds to realize it, and then he was yanking the remote out of her hands and mashing the stop button like it was the vilest insect he'd ever seen and staring at the television, wide eyed, as the tape stopped playing and he turned it off.

Silence reigned until Jazz's voice cut through it. "Let us never speak of this again."

---

**This did actually happen to me. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, **_**Hush**_** was the episode, and it was Friday afternoon at my house with four friends… Needless to say I was mortified. I chose to go a slightly tamer route and not detail the happenings of Jack and Maddie's tape, but I'm sure you get the idea. :D**


	11. Playing the Melody

67. Playing the Melody

It was always the best when he could convince her to crawl back into bed for the afternoon. This was no different, a Sunday with the hectic week looming over them. The sky was cloudy and overcast and a steady drizzle had been pouring since before dawn making the air chill and damp on his skin when he'd made his only venture out to get the paper.

That was why he was curled in bed, half wrapped around Sam and sleepily nuzzling her neck while she ran her fingers through his hair.

"I should be doing something," she murmured as he pressed a kiss to her throat and held her tighter, his hands smoothing down her side. She slid one hand down and threaded it through his fingers.

"Don't," and he smiled as he turned her to him, "tell me you don't like staying in bed with me."

She laughed softly. "I never said I don't, Danny. But we have so much to do."

It was true, they still had about a million things left to do on the house. It was old, much older than most of the brownstones in Amity, and they'd bought it under the conditions that they'd remodel it, update the style. They weren't even halfway done and they'd been living in it for nearly a year. But at that moment, Danny didn't really care, he still wanted to stay cuddled up to Sam and not think about anything that involved more work than his body against hers.

"We can do it next weekend," he whispered as he drew her hand up and pressed a kiss to her palm, softly enough that she breathed out a shaky breath as he splayed her hand against his, teasing her fingers apart and smiling at how his overlapped hers by nearly an inch.

"I wish you hadn't quit your piano lessons," she said, not for the first time as she looked at his hand. "You've got the hands for it."

He smiled. "I was twelve when I stopped. That was almost fifteen years ago."

"But still," she said, and he quieted her with a kiss. Danny let his fingers dance nimbly down the smooth skin of her belly.

"The only instrument I'm interested in playing is you."


	12. Expectations

33. Expectations

Sam yawned and stretched as she woke, grimacing at the unaccustomed soreness that sang through her body as it shifted beneath the blankets that were still piled atop her. A smile slipped across herself as myriad memories of the night before raced through her mind reminding her of what, exactly, had happened. Her twentieth birthday, a party thrown by Tucker and Danny, and Danny hadn't shown up. But that, of course, wasn't what had her smiling.

No, it was when Danny had finally shown up, hours after the party had ended, completely disheveled though thankfully with no visible wounds, and begging forgiveness at her door well after one in the morning. And then he'd kissed her. Completely, thoroughly, breathlessly kissed her until she was melting into him.

_I love you, Sam._

The words danced in her head as she smiled, stretching again and ignoring her body's protests as she rolled over towards the expected warmth of a sleeping body beside her. But there wasn't anything, and Sam blinked the last bits of sleep from her eyes as she ran a hand over the empty side of the bed where Danny should have been. she blinked again against the hot sting of tears as she drew her hand back, knowing that he had been gone long enough for the bed to grow cold in his absence.

She tried not to cry. She really did, but it was so hard not to. It was hard not to realize that he'd used her, that he'd taken her, had her, and had left without so much as a note. It had been her first time; she'd known for years that she wanted no one else but him. And Sam knew that it hadn't been Danny's first time, she knew that he'd been intimate with other girls. _One,_ she could silently admit. Now two.

"I should have expected it," she murmured as she angrily scrubbed at the tears on her face. "He's a guy. He's a jerk."

For some reason, it only made her cry harder, legs curled up to her chest, face buried against her knees as slim arms wrapped around them and held herself close. It hurt, dear god it hurt so badly, and the crying didn't seem to help, for all that she couldn't stop. She loved him, so damned much, and he'd said it to her. He'd told her he loved her, and even if she hadn't said it he had to know. She'd told him more than once that she was never going to just fall into bed with someone. That when she finally did take that step it would be because she knew him, loved him, and wanted to spend the rest of her life with him.

And she had fallen into bed with the person she wanted to marry, and he had gone before the sun had finished rising, slipping out as she slept.

There was a rustle from the wall and Sam startled, her head jerking up and violet eyes going wide at the unexpected noise.

"Sam?" It was Danny, just now slipping back through the wall, a paper bag in one hand and dusting snow from his once again black hair as he dropped to the thick carpeting and looked at her. "Sam, what's wrong? Why are you crying? Did I hurt you?"

She shook her head, again crying inexplicably as he dropped the bag on the bed and crawled up beside her, drawing her into his arms and smoothing her hair away from her face as she cried. "Oh, Sammy, don't cry," and the gentle words didn't help her stem the tears as much as the steady warmth of his arms around her. She felt him press a kiss to her hair and then another to her temple, and Sam closed her eyes.

"You thought I left, didn't you?" he asked, and she didn't answer, knowing that it would be answer enough. She felt him sigh, his chest rising and falling beneath her ear, and then his voice rumbled again. "I got breakfast. Your favorite. Blueberry muffins and cream cheese. I wanted to surprise you."

He chuckled. "The next time I want to surprise you I'll make you breakfast in bed." Sam could only laugh weakly, knowing that it was tantamount to poisoning since Danny, like the rest of his family, was culinarily challenged.

"You don't have to. I just didn't expect this. Any of it," she whispered, and he smoothed his hands along her shoulders to soothe her.

"Well that's the problem," Danny said reasonably. "You should. But we'll have to work on that over the next fifty or sixty years."


	13. Tears

26. Tears

I'm not a normal girl. I never have been, no matter what my mother wants to try and pretend. Even as a child I would frequently crawl in to dark corners and chant against the knocking in my head. As I grew older I stopped crawling into corner and hiding, and I learned not to answer the door. Especially after the accident in freshman year when Danny got his ghost powers.

My fault, and the knowledge of who, exactly, is to blame doesn't escape me as I sit in this stark white hallway waiting for the doctors to tell us how he is, whether he's alive or not. I never told Danny or Tucker at first, because I'd already had other children laugh at me, mock me, before i met them. It was an instinct after that to his it, to protect the secret hidden behind my eyes.

And after Danny got his powers, it was even more important that I keep the secret. Better that Danny not know what happened to the spirits trapped on this side of the afterlife and without the will and psychic imprint that would allow them to manifest as a corporeal ghost. Better that he not know exactly how many of these disembodied souls there are floating around us all the time.

Better that he not know how easily it comes to me to speak to them.

So instead, I turn them away. Even on the worst day of my life and my grandmother died… She knocked. And I sang a discordant tune and turned her away so that I could keep my secret. I haven't let a spirit inside in more than ten years, which is saying something considering that I am barely eighteen now. She's never come back, never knocked again, even though I frequently think that maybe I'll let her in if she does.

Some nights I think that perhaps I'll wrap my fingers around the locket that I inherited from her upon her death, and use it as a touchstone to seek her spirit and call it to me from wherever it is roaming. But I don't. I don't ever. Idle wishes; nothing more. Once I let one in, it will be so much harder to turn the rest away, so much harder to have to say, "This spirit is more important than you, this spirit may talk to me."

I might as well tell each of them that they don't matter, that I don't care how they died, who killed them, hurt them, harmed them. So instead I listen to none, not willing to take the chance that I won't be able to turn them away at will if I listen to one.

But today my chair is hard and unforgiving beneath me, and digs into the back of my legs. Today, I think is far worse than the day my grandmother knocked. Because today I am waiting for the doctors to come out and tell us all that Danny had died, that Danny's injuries were too much and he has succumbed to them. Because today I am crying in the hallway of the hospital as his parents, his sister, our best friend watch me in concern, wondering why I have finally given in to the tears.

Because today… Today Danny is the one knocking.

Because today… Today I am answering.

---

**The Violet Eyes concept is borrowed from a book titled **_**Through Violet Eyes**_** by Stephen Woodworth. Give it a try and try not to think of Sam too much if you do.**


	14. Triangle

90. Triangle

**Excerpted from **_**Awakening**_**. (This one is not for the faint of heart. That's the only warning I'm giving.)**

He'd thought about it before, about the fact that he might one day stumble across Sam and one of her dates, one of the people she kissed. Might actually see them kissing. But this… it wasn't anything like what he had expected. In his mind's eye the person Sam was kissing was always male. And the person Sam was kissing definitely wasn't Danni. Even in his worst imagined visions, it was nowhere close to Danni.

But he'd seen it, he'd seen the way Danni had pressed Sam into the wall. He'd very nearly stepped out of the shadows he'd been hiding in to stop whatever was happening, except that Sam had been smiling. And not exactly a friendly smile. A lust ridden half lidded sensual smile that made things deep inside Danny coil and clench with desire and pure want to have it turned on him.

And then the younger girl had pressed herself against Sam, and lifted her hands to slide through Sam's hair as her lips pressed into Sam's, tongue slipping out to caress Sam's lower lip before she parted them and let Danni kiss her fully. It wasn't even just that that had Danny is such a daze. It was that, while Danni was kissing her, Danni's hands had touched her in ways Danny had only dreamt about. And Sam had touched her back.

He bit his lip and groaned as he thought about the way her slim pale hands had skimmed down Danni's body, caressing and casually sliding under the shorter girl's shirt to slide it up and expose smooth skin and a pale pink bra. Danny had closed his eyes then, turned away and walked through the wall and back into his room to escape what he was seeing.

"Hey, Danny." Danni's voice was soft behind him, and more than a little rough. Her lips were swollen when he turned around to look at her, and she smiled at him. Danny didn't say anything, wondering why it suddenly came to mind that the last time Danni's lips had been so red and inviting it had been because of him, because he'd been kissing her the very same way she'd just been kissing Sam.

"You look a little tense," she offered and stepped closer, her hands flitting at his waist before smoothing up his stomach and chest to rest on his shoulders, at the angle where his neck met them, and she squeezed slightly against the tight knots of tension. "I can help you out."

The offer was there, Danny could hear it plain as day, and wondered why he was so willing to take her up on it as he lowered his mouth to hers thinking, not for the first time, that it was so very wrong. She was soft, just like she'd been before, each time when he'd touched her, tasted her, made her make the tiny pleasure sounds she was breathing into his mouth. He groaned as he trailed his hands down the same paths along her body that Sam had taken, knowing even as he did it that it was more than half for want of touching the places Sam had touched.

The second pair of hands that were suddenly covering his own startled him back and away from Danni, and Danny could only stare in shock at Sam where she stood behind the younger girl. The shock only deepened when Danni turned from him, tossing a smile as she did so and reached up to pull Sam down to her and kiss her again with Danny standing only inches from both of them. Sam didn't take her eyes off of him as she kissed Danni, only letting them slip shut when Danni's hands became more insistent and worked the buttons of Sam's shirt, undoing them and sliding the thin material apart.

Black silk on pale, creamy skin. Somehow Danny wasn't surprised. But he was surprised when Danni pulled away from Sam, stepped to the side and all but shoved Sam against him.

"Kiss her." The tone was reasonable, but held an order that he wouldn't want to disobey even if it weren't there.

Sam was different. She was soft, just like Danni, but she was sweeter. Danni tasted almost like Danny thought of sex. Hot and spicy and when he kissed her he could barely think beyond the moment that he was living in. But Sam. She was so very different. When he kissed her he tasted honeyed sweetness, and it felt so right, like a homecoming he hadn't even known he'd been waiting for.

She was shy, too, and nothing like Danni. Her hands hesitated to touch him, but even so Danny could feel the way she trembled against him as he let his hands slide to her waist, holding her tightly and willing himself not to touch her as he kissed her. The hands against his back almost startled him, but at the first gentle caress he couldn't think of anything, not even caring when a chill crossed him and he realized that Danni had phased his shirt from his body.

Her hands were hot as they moved across his skin, her mouth hotter as she moved around his body so that she was standing next to Sam and suddenly pulling her away from Danny to kiss her again, before turning to press a hot kiss against Danny's lips. Then Sam's mouth was on his shoulder, kissing, almost biting as she moved up his neck, and his hands were twisted in the fabric of the shirt he was trying desperately not to rip from her.

Again he thought dimly that it was wrong to be doing this. Wrong to be touching Sam like this, more than wrong to be touching Danni like this, regardless of what he'd done with her already. But somehow Danny couldn't bring himself to care.

---

**Hope I didn't freak you guys out too much. :D But I'm more than willing to drabble some more of this out if anyone requests. Me? A pervert? Whatever made you think that?**


	15. Introduction

1. Introduction

**Andy's Tale, 3**

Danny sighed at the soft knock on the door. It was before seven and Andy was still asleep. Danny had taken the couch as a long term arrangement until he figured the mess out. But the slip of paper on the coffee table had definitely placed the final nail in the coffin. Not that he thought he could deny Andy, somehow just looking at the little boy told him louder than anything possibly could that Andy was his son. And now he was confessing it to the first person outside of Sam, though that hadn't been a confession.

"Hey," he said as he opened the door and took the suitcase from his sister. She looked a little tired but mostly awake as she slipped through the door, worry screaming in her pretty green eyes.

"You said it was an emergency."

He nodded. "Go look in my bed."

Jazz narrowed her eyes. "Danny, you know I'm happy that you and Sam are still together. But if you dragged me all the way from New York just to show me that you finally slept with her…" She trailed off at the completely broken look in his eyes and moved past him a quick walk, not far from a sprint to dart to the room she knew was his and peer into the still gloom.

And when she came back out and dropped to the couch beside him he looked up at her, answering the question before she could ask. "He's mine."

"Are you sure, Danny?" Jazz touched his arm, wanting to reassure him. She found him shoving a piece of paper into her hands, and her eyes widened as she read it. A paternity test, and there was no doubt that Danny was the father. Not with a better than ninety-nine percent accuracy.

"It was prom night," he said softly. "It's the only time I can think of. You know I got trashed. Apparently I didn't just stumble around town before making it home."

Jazz nodded, still numb as she stared at her brother. Then her head swiveled at the sound of rustled clothes from the hallway, and she saw the small boy, now awake and standing there. "Oh," she breathed as she saw the clear blue of her eyes, and knew exactly how Danny had been so sure, and then her eyes dropped to the cast on his tiny wrist, no longer white but decorated in dozens of colorful doodles that had her brother's handy work written all over them.

Danny shifted on the couch and then stood heading straight for him, dropping down to a knee and smiling warmly. "Hey, Buddy. I want you to meet someone."

The child nodded sleepily as Danny scooped him up in his arms and brought him over to Jazz, who found herself standing without hesitation.

"Andy," he said. "This is your Aunt Jazz."

---

**Inspired from a drabble written by Me The Anon One. Chapter 6, **_**Keeping Secrets**_**, of her **_**100 Drabble Challenge**_**. With her permission I've taken the single drabble and made into something else.**


	16. Seeing Red

86. Seeing Red

**Excerpted from **_**I'll Let You Live**_

She didn't know what woke her. She had absolutely no idea what woke her, but whatever it was had woke Jack, too, and Maddie rubbed at her eyes trying to clear the sleepy blur from them as she swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. She paused long enough to grab her robe and slip it on before going and checking the hall. It was empty, but that was how she expected to find it.

She didn't think it had been breaking glass or anything like that. Surely a burglar wouldn't be foolish enough to try Fenton Works. But no matter, better to check and be safe than sorry. And Jack had the same idea, because he was following her from bed to the hall.

Jazz's door was closed, but when Maddie eased it open she saw her only daughter sitting up and blinking sleepily as she pushed her red hair from her face. But Jazz's sleep left her face easily, and without a word she tossed her heavy blanket back and darted from her bed, sliding past her mother and reaching for the knob on Danny's room, Maddie's next destination. It turned easily and Jazz swung it in without waiting, Maddie close behind her.

Jazz wasn't surprised when she found the room empty, but, unlike her mother, Jazz knew exactly what it was that had tugged her from her dreamless sleep. She could recall quite easily the loud thump followed by the cry that she knew was her brothers. And Jazz could only assume that it meant that Danny had been startled from his sleep by a ghost, one of his ghostly enemies. Especially since the bed looked like he should still have been in it, the blankets still tugged up to the top.

"Where's Danny?"

Jazz turned to find her father's bulk shadowing her mother, and in the silence that followed Jazz couldn't find a decent enough excuse. She shrugged, trying to hide the sudden worry that was growing by the moment. "He probably went to get a drink," she offered.

All she could do was follow her parents downstairs, the worry growing and becoming a sudden shaft of fear that Jazz couldn't explain. The kitchen was empty. The living room, her father's, study which only served now as another storage room, and the rest of downstairs were empty. The front door was locked, and Jazz began to bite her lip as she tried to find a way to make her parents stop looking.

But nothing came to mind and she watched as they started to climb the stairs, moving a little faster as the fear Jazz was feeling started to seep into them, albeit for a different reason. They hadn't made it more than three steps before the faint whir and rumble that was the door to the ghost portal sounded beneath them, and Jazz's eyes flew to the lab door.

The closed and still locked door.

She didn't even look back to see her parents following as she darted for the door, throwing the lock and swinging it wide as she raced down the stairs wondering if it was Danny leaving or coming back. He never had to open the doors to send someone back, so it must be serious, and she had to get to him first, warn him that their parents were on the way, keep him for changing and letting his secret slip.

But the sight that greeted her as she reached the bottom of the stairs had her coming to a sudden and complete stop, and her breath catching in her throat, and a scream stilled inside her because she couldn't breathe. She barely registered when her parents came to just as sudden a halt behind her, knowing without thinking that their eyes were glued to her brother, their son.

Because Danny was there, sitting in a chair not ten feet away from them, so close to the open and swirling glow of the portal. His eyes were closed, his head drooped so that his chin rested on his chest. He had indeed been taken by surprise, he was wearing his pajama pants and nothing else, his pale skin making the red streaks of blood on his chest into macabre patterns painted there. His ankles were taped together, and his wrists to the arms of the chair.

But what frightened Jazz the most, what had her suddenly screaming, were the bloody gashes along either arm, like open hungry mouths that barely leaked bright red blood as her brother sat there dying.


	17. Dying

43. Dying

**Andy's Tale, 4**

Danny considered himself much poorer after the shopping spree that Jazz had engineered for him. She'd stuck with taking a two week vacation to help him get things under control with Andy, to try and organize the little boy's life. Danny really didn't have much of a clue what to do with a five year old. It was Jazz who gave him the steady shoulder he needed to enroll Andy in elementary school, to request the paperwork that would add Andy onto his health insurance.

She'd been the one to insist that he have a will made then and there, and had even gotten one of her lawyer friends in New York to take care of it, overnighting the finished product for Danny to sign. She'd been the one to tease Danny over the numerous cans of Spaghetti-O's and ravioli in his cabinets, and then she bought him a cookbook with (according to her) simple and easy and quick things that were tasty and healthy.

It reminded him of Sam. He'd spent most of that night prowling the city looking for a ghost to take the frustration out on.

But the thing he was most grateful for, almost even more than the shoulder to cry on, was the way she handled their parents for him. Because after nearly a month of not hearing from Danny, their mother had showed up at the door wanting to see him, and had been shocked beyond belief to find out that Jazz was there, and had been already for a whole week. Jazz managed to get her gone without ever once mentioning Andy or Sam or anything other than a serious thing that he was trying to deal with. And that he'd talk to them when he was ready.

And he wasn't ready.

Dealing with it involved Jazz dragging Danny and Andy to more than one store and spending most of Danny's savings that weren't earmarked for a house or emergencies on children's furniture, clothes, toys, books, and on Danny's insistence a new computer for his son. Most would be delivered in the morning, some tonight, like the bed. The rest Danny was having to haul up the stairs to his apartment. Somehow it seemed infinitely wrong that his sister had spent so much of his money on the shopping spree, and Danny was the one carrying everything.

Except for Andy. Andy was in Jazz's arms, more than half asleep, his eyes half lidded as he dozed against her shoulder and Danny couldn't help but smile as Jazz unlocked the door and stepped to the side to let Danny drop everything onto the floor. She frowned as she stepped through the bags, but it was more than half smile, and she disappeared down the hall to lay the boy in Danny's bed as Danny began to sort through bags and attempt to organize them into clothes, toys, or anything that didn't fit those two descriptions.

It wasn't until he was finished and Jazz was curled on the couch that Danny finally found his way into the kitchen for a soda and something a little more substantial. That was when he saw that the little homey touches were gone. The tiny bud vase of wilted and dead flowers was gone from where'd he'd kept it behind the sink, even after they had grown black and withered. The pretty hand towels that had hung on the front of the stove were gone, and Danny's heart stuttered in his chest as he began to look for more missing things.

The living room was missing some of the little photos that they'd taken together, the glass rose that he'd bought her was gone, the stone dragon was gone. The picture that had hung in the hall was gone, the one he'd had blown up of them hugging after a symphony she'd forced him to go to. They'd both been dressed nicely and the picture had been so beautiful… and now it was gone. He didn't bother looking in the computer room, the room that was now empty and waiting for Andy's new things.

But when he peered into his room he could tell easily that the little things were gone. The pair of earrings that she left there habitually, gone. The bracelet he'd gotten her for graduation, gone. And in the bathroom anything that wasn't perfectly male was gone, right down to the razor that she left in case she needed to take a shower.

It was all gone and Danny walked numbly back out to where Jazz was engrossed in the television, and the rest of his life were falling to pieces. Because when he walked back into the dining room, intending to go straight through to the kitchen for the soda he still hadn't gotten, Danny saw the one thing she had left.

They key that he'd given her to the apartment, so that she could come and go as she pleased. The key that she'd had since he'd moved in more than a year ago, the key that was never lost, never off of her keychain, the key that let Danny wake up to Sam making breakfast on Saturday mornings, the key that told him more than anything else that she was happy with him.

It was there, alone, on the table.

He picked it up and held it in his hands as the pain gave way to tears, and Danny wondered how anything could be worse than this.

---

**Inspired from a drabble written by Me The Anon One. Chapter 6, **_**Keeping Secrets**_**, of her **_**100 Drabble Challenge**_**. With her permission I've taken the single drabble and made into something else.**


	18. Childhood

48. Childhood

**3 am, 1**

It wasn't unusual for three in the morning to find Maddie ensconced at the kitchen table with her son and a pint of strawberry or chocolate ice cream. It was comfort food, pure and simple. He needed it because of his ghost fights and the pressure of keeping his secret and surviving.

She needed it to survive knowing exactly what he was out doing at all hours of the day, to survive the bruises, cuts, and some of the worse injuries he'd ever had. Of course, more often than not lately, especially as the end of his junior year came nearer, three in the morning more often saw Maddie nursing a bowl by herself knowing that he was out fighting.

Sometimes she wished that she could just take it all back, never have built the ghost portal and cursed her son to the half lives he seemed to thrive on. But more often than not she treasured the fact that her son would share his deepest fears and greatest loves with her over the creamy confection.

Tonight was no different. She'd heard him making his way downstairs and had followed, smiling when he scraped several scoops of ice cream into a second bowl for her and sat down without so much as blinking once she appeared. She couldn't help but notice the many scrapes along his arms, and frowned as she wondered what had done it. It was one of the reasons Danny so seldom wore short sleeves now, even when the weather seemed to demand it.

Better to suffer a little in the heat that to risk exposure.

"They look bad," she said softly as she dug her spoon into the ice cream, not looking up.

She could almost feel the shrug in his voice, and the amusement too as he said, "You should have seen them earlier. They're much better."

Maddie smothered the frown in another spoonful of ice cream before glancing up at his dull blue eyes and saying, "I worry about you, Danny."

This time she saw the shrug. "It's okay, Mom. I'm okay. I've got Tucker and Sam." He smiled into his ice cream and swirled it around in the bowl. "I love her."

Maddie bit back a chuckle, knowing that any sudden noises could be a very bad thing. "I know you do, Danny. Maybe you should tell her?"

He shook his head sleepily, the ice cream half gone and already forgotten as he pushed his chair back. The bowl was placed quietly in the sink and Danny carefully returned the ice cream to the freezer before stooping and pressing a kiss to his mother's cheek. It was his ritual, never walking away from her and heading upstairs and back to his bed where he belonged without kissing her. Maddie sighed as she watched him.

He was practically grown, more than if she took into account his ghost hunting activities. Sometimes she missed her little boy, without any ghost powers or secrets, and even without the deep love he felt for the girl Maddie was sure would one day be her daughter-in-law. Sometimes she wished that Danny would quit hiding and come out and say the things that he wanted and needed to say without fear.

Those were the nights that Maddie wished she could tramp up the stairs and crawl back into bed as easily as Danny did. But, and she sighed as she set her own bowl in the sink and ran water into each of them before turning to the stairs herself. But that wasn't going to happen, because she wasn't Danny and didn't have the luxury that he did.

She smiled absently as she climbed the stairs quietly. Often, at three in the morning, Maddie wondered what Danny would do if he one day remembered his childhood tendency to sleepwalk.


	19. Creation

47. Creation

**Excerpted from **_**Hollowpoint**_

No matter what Jazz and tucker thought, Danny hadn't given up ghost hunting. He hadn't given up his powers, he hadn't done anything but refuse to be the protector of Amity Park. The protector of anyone if it meant that they had to depend on the Phantom, because Danny knew first hand how unreliable the Phantom could be and the mistakes he could make. But he still hunted, and sometimes defended. If it was necessary.

Mostly it less than necessary and more that ghosts from across the city, the country, and on one memorable occasion, an international visitor who had ranted in mandarin until Danny had shut him up permanently. But for the times when it happened, necessary or not, Danny liked to be prepared. And prepared was why he was holed up in his apartment with something that sounded vaguely rock cranked up and his trusted Sig-Sauer on the table in front of him, surrounded by other things that no one but those who made their own bullets would recognize.

And even then, it would still have confused the makers of bullets, because where they would have lead, a tiny forge to melt it, molds to shape it and place it in the jacket of the round, Danny had so much less.

It was why he'd damned near hurt Sam when he'd yanked the gun from her hand that afternoon. No matter that she had a keen eye for weapons, an appreciation of a finely made pistol, he'd thought for a moment he'd actually hurt her when he snatched away and wondered how, exactly, she'd gotten it from beneath his jacket and slid it from the innerpants holster he carried it in at the small of his back. She said she was fine, he wasn't sure if he believed her, but he was thankful that he'd been able to cut out shortly after.

For once Dan Fenton hadn't offered to stay and help on another case, try and butt his head through a dead end on one of his own.

No, instead _Danny_ Fenton was sitting on his couch and holding an empty jacket in his hands, fingers careful as they gripped the smooth cylindrical metal shape, and smirking at the irony that the small thing reminded him so forcefully of a Fenton thermos. Gun powder was carefully measured in and Danny set it in the clamps and then crimped a hollowpoint lead round inside the rim. He looked at it for a moment before holding one hand out and watching as ectoenergy swirled at his fingertips.

This was why it wasn't anything that would be recognized, because Danny never actually did the melting, the molding. He loaded it with gun powder, he set the round inside the jacket. But the actual manufacture that Danny did had nothing to do with the making of bullets and everything to do with the swirling green and blue that caressed his hand coldly as he focused for a moment.

When he was done, when Danny had opened his eyes, at the tip of one finger was a tiny silvery blue ball that gleamed coldly. It was no more than a few millimeters across, but Danny knew exactly how deadly it could be. Because inside, burning brightly, was green ectoenergy that was more powerful than the gunpowder he had loaded into the jacket.

Silently he slipped the sphere into the hollowpoint of the bullet and then picked up a stick of wax from the table. A flick of his thumb and five drops of wax were dripping down, coating the tip of the bullet and smoothing out as it solidified. Done, he turned to the other ten bullets he had already made, and dropped the clip from the Sig. A P226 X-Five Tactical, it held ten rounds in the clip, and one in the chamber.

He made sure that all eleven were loaded.


	20. Illusion

45. Illusion

_I'm going to be sick,_ was all that I could think. I've never felt that ill before, not even the day that Danny sat me and Tucker down to have a heart to heart. A heart to heart. I snorted. That wasn't what I would have called it. Now _he_ looked sick that day, and I couldn't blame him once he told use why. The confession that, on the one and only date he'd scored with Princess Paulina (and feel free to read between the lines for the sarcasm), he'd gotten drunk, they'd had sex, and somehow she'd ended up pregnant.

I felt awful that day, and for weeks after when I could barely speak to him beyond faint support that he had done the right thing by stepping up when she told him. But this… This was about a million times worse.

They didn't know I was there, and i could hear every word they were saying. It was all about Paulina and Danny and what they'd done. Or rather, hadn't.

"Are you serious, Paulina?" Star was asking, her tone too perky for me, and too slimy to even be human.

There was a light giggle that made my skin crawl. "_Si_, as if I'd have sex with a boy who kept calling me someone else's name." The sound of a locker slamming echoed in the locker room and I dug my cell phone out of my purse, trying not to wonder who Danny had been naming Paulina once she pumped enough alcohol into him.

Cell phone found I pressed the speed dial for Danny's number, only holding it to my ear long enough to know that he'd answered his cell. Grounded he might have been, but this was his secret cell, the one I had given him after the fact so that he, Tucker and I could stay in touch, alert each other to ghostly presences, and generally try and save Danny from the fear that Paulina's father would force him into a shotgun wedding.

Personally, I think I would have gone ghost permanently at the thought. Danny, however, appeared to be even braver than I'd thought. Especially since he'd told me once, though he didn't know I was listening in on his conversation with Tucker, that he wasn't even sure why he'd gone on the one date with her. Sort of like he was curious what it would be like, but not something he was exactly thrilled over.

I did refrain from calling him about a dozen nasty names. He was having a hard enough time as it was.

But I knew he'd answered, I'd heard him say, "Hello," and then I held the phone out where it could catch the echoing conversation with ease.

"So who _is_ the father, Polly?" Star again, the well trained sycophant. Another locker closed and I winced, wondering if it would distort Paulina's reply.

"I have no idea." Not a bit of distortion, she'd waited more than a few moments before answering.

Like she'd had to think about it, possibly go through a list of the boys she'd slept with in the last few years at Casper High. Given the fact that I could name more than a dozen off of the top of my head, and they had all been in the last few months of our junior year, I wondered if it might be easier for her to keep a list of who she _hadn't_ slept with. And that realization made me even more disgusted, because Paulina, because all of us, are only a few days away from the last day of our junior year.

"I know it's not Dash or Kwan. I don't do anything like that with them anymore," she said and I heard a rustle of fabric as she hefted her backpack, and I trailed behind with the phone, making sure that it caught anything and everything. "I know it's not Danny's either. Why would I have sex with him? He thought I was the goth geek."

I admit it, I almost dropped the phone as she said that. Her voice may have dripped with disdain as she said it, but she'd been the one to ask Danny out. And I know that Danny has grown into a better than average specimen for the opposite sex. I've seen him half naked too many times not to notice. Not that it was sexual, obviously not, but honestly, there's only so much modesty a guy can have when he's being patched up every other night.

But I didn't drop the phone. I hung behind her, letting the door swing fully closed and prepared to make sure that Danny heard until I heard Paulina exclaiming, "Danny! I'm so glad to see you. Carry my bag?" through the door.

And I heard his, "No," plain as day even before I swung the door opened and followed to stand right behind her.

Not many people say no to Paulina, and Danny's 'no' was practically echoing down the hallway as Paulina arched an eyebrow and asked, "Excuse me?" And her voice echoed from more places than her mouth. Danny's cell phone, that was still on, and still set to speaker as Paulina glanced at him and narrowed her eyes. "What the hell is going on?"

That, too, echoed, and then the door swung shut and Paulina turned around to see the cell phone in my hand. And that was when I noticed that the hall had been silent before we walked out, the three of us, and I realized that Danny must have been close enough to have been standing there with the phone on speaker for enough of the conversation to be heard by too many people for her to deny it.

And teachers, too.

Danny was silent as he closed the cell phone, and I closed mine, and the noise in the hall resumed as Paulina was led off my Coach Tetslaff and Mr. Lancer. But now, instead of the noise being the gossip about how Fenton had nailed Paulina, or the other way around if you were a girl, it was about how I nailed Paulina. And not in the pervy way.


	21. Broken Pieces

76. Broken Pieces

**Andy's Tale, 5**

Danny was stone faced as he rang the doorbell on his parents' home, a notebook clutched in his right hand. Jazz was beside him, and Andy was between them, the child clinging to his father as his aunt rested a reassuring hand on his shoulder. The wait was shorter than Danny had expected, but when his mother opened the door he only said, "I need to talk to you, Mom. And Dad, too."

He refused to say a word more until they were ensconced in the kitchen, Jazz at the doorway and his mother at the kitchen table as his father thundered his way up the stairs. But once his father was there, Danny drew in a breath and stared at his mother, who was looking questioningly at Andy and watching Danny very carefully. Danny knew that she would suspect; Andy's eyes weren't easily mistaken.

"This is Andy," he said quietly. "He's my son." Then Danny's eyes narrowed on his father, and he held the notebook out. "But you already knew that, didn't you, Dad?"

Danny didn't turn for more than a second to press a kiss to Andy's bright gold hair and then let him go to Jazz. They'd already discussed it, when Danny had been adamant about confronting his father. She would take the boy to the Op Center and show him the nifty ghost things there. And they'd hope like hell that it was far enough that Andy wouldn't hear Daddy losing his temper.

His mom was quiet for a moment, and then she turned to her husband. "Jack, is this true?"

"It's true," Danny said bitterly as he dropped the notebook in front of his mother. The page it was on was incriminating enough, but Danny had read through all three of the notebooks that had been packed in the boxes of Andy's toys that had been delivered the day before. Misplaced, he was sure, but he was grateful for the oversight, because it gave him the answer he'd wanted for more than a month.

How he'd had a child and not known it.

"You paid her off. You paid her off to leave town and never tell me. And then you lied to me, Dad. For six years." Danny tried to keep his voice down, his tone even, even to the point of feeling like his jaw was going to break from how hard he was clenching it.

"You were doing so well in school, Danny," Jack said, and Danny and Maddie could only stare. "You'd just graduated, you were going to college, you'd just started dating Sam. I was only trying to protect you."

"You were trying to protect me?" Contempt dripped from his voice, and Danny narrowed his eyes at his father. "Star died. And that's on your head. Because if I'd known, I would have done the right thing and helped her, been there for her and Andy. And maybe she wouldn't have gotten sick like she did."

Jack said nothing for a moment. "Sam would have left you."

The hurt stabbed through Danny's heart suddenly, making him gasp against the sudden pain of it as his eyes watered. "She would have left me?" he asked, his voice breaking. It had only been two days since he'd found Sam's key, and the emotions were still angry and red and raw. "She _did_ leave me, Dad. She left," and his voice rose with each word. "She left. She fucking left."

Jack didn't say anything, didn't even try to meet Danny's angry, broken blue gaze. He was smart enough not to look to his wife, who was torn between glaring at her husband and gaping at her son.

"And you know what, Dad? I'm leaving too. I never thought I'd say this, but I'm ashamed of you." Danny paused and glanced at his mother. "Jazz is leaving the day after tomorrow. We wanted to know if you wanted to come to dinner before she did." Another glance, back at his father, and then a soft, "Just you."

Danny didn't wait for an answer as he turned on his heel and stalked up the stairs to collect his son.

---

**Inspired from a drabble written by Me The Anon One. Chapter 6, **_**Keeping Secrets**_**, of her **_**100 Drabble Challenge**_**. With her permission I've taken the single drabble and made into something else.**


	22. All That I Have

92. All That I Have

He'd been waiting for what felt like hours. Though logically Danny knew that it hadn't been all that long since they'd kicked him out, it still felt like an entire lifetime had passed him by and left him in its dust while he waited for someone, anyone, to come and tell him what was going on. In all honesty, he was at a loss, and nothing his parents or her parents could say was going to help him understand it, and the more his mother and sister tried to help, the more frightened Danny became.

There was no help he could seek, not even Clockwork, not since Danny had learned more of the time ghost's responsibilities. And there wasn't even a smile from her parents, or a frown. Only hateful glares, but he hadn't expected anything different. They'd hated him since he'd started dating Sam more than ten years before, when they were sixteen. They'd hated him seven years before when he'd proposed to her, and they'd more than hated him six years before when he and Sam had taken their vows.

And now he was pacing the hallways of the hospital wondering why, when everything they had done, all of the hard work and careful studying he'd gone through, he'd been kicked out of the delivery room. There was no explanation but the worried look his sister had given him when the nurse had bustled him out, the pitying look his mother had given when she'd wrapped her arms around him.

There was no help, there was no sound beyond the fear that screamed in his ears. And oh, god, how badly he wanted to hear her cursing him for doing this to her like so many of the other women who'd delivered since he'd brought Sam in the day before. And even more, to hear the first cries of a child that was half him, half her.

Instead he heard silence behind the faint whoosh of a door as it swung open, and tired bloodshot blue eyes found her doctor in green scrubs. Fresh green scrubs that looked new from their sterile package, and Danny's swift appraising gaze didn't miss the blood along the man's elbow, mostly dried and somehow missed when he'd obviously cleaned himself off.

"Mr. Fenton?" he said softly, and Danny's heart nearly stopped.

He opened his mouth, and nothing came out, and Danny felt his mother's arm around his waist, and then his father's at his shoulders.

"I'm sorry," the doctor said, and Danny suddenly hated the man more than anyone he'd ever hated in the world. Hated him for being sorry, hated him for daring to say that he was sorry.

"Sam?" Danny's voice was choked and he wondered if he'd only thought her name or actually said it out loud until there was a pitying shake of the head.

"There were complications, Mr. Fenton. Your wife… She didn't make it."

"No." That was definitely whispered, and Danny tried to quiet the sudden roaring in his ears as he clung to his mother for a moment. He swallowed, blinked once and met the doctor's eyes. "The baby?"

The baby. They'd decided not to find out whether it was a boy or girl. They'd had so many good arguments about whether it was a boy or a girl. What color to paint his or her room, what color to buy for the furniture. Clothes, toys. They'd even managed to work in the meat versus vegetarian debate, no matter that it would months before the baby would eat anything besides milk and formula.

He barely caught the faint shake of the head, but there was no missing the compassionate, "I'm so sorry."

"No." A whisper again, and the last thing Danny said as his world turned dark.


	23. No Way Out

59. No Way Out

It had started with a phone call, and four simple words. "My parents are gone." Far be it from Danny to pass up an opportunity that would let him spend time alone with Sam. He didn't have enough time with her as it was, the only appropriate times being with Tucker around. It was no secret that her parents didn't like him. Danny could only imagine how they'd feel about him if they knew he'd asked Sam out on her sixteenth birthday more than two years ago.

He didn't even want to contemplate how her parents would feel about him if they knew the things he was doing with their only daughter at that precise moment.

Then again, Danny was sure that he didn't want anyone to know what he was doing with Sam. To Sam. The only one who needed to know _was_ Sam, and Danny was positive that she knew exactly what he was doing to her. The way she was whimpering and digging her nails into the skin along his shoulders was proof enough.

A smile curved his lips and Danny pressed a gentle kiss to the salty skin of her throat. "Love you, Sam," he murmured, letting his lips ghost over the shape of her ear as he moved against her, within her, and Sam's breath caught in her throat as he did.

"Danny." His name was a plea, a prayer, and she turned her face to his to kiss him, oblivious to anything but the two of them, and the way they were loving each other.

"Oh," and the word was soft, almost unintelligible between them, and Danny wasn't sure who said it, wasn't sure he cared. All that mattered was him, and her. Nothing else existed. Until a shriek cut through the air and Danny stopped still, deathly pale as he shielded Sam beneath him, one hand scrabbling to make sure that the sheet was still over both of them.

"What are you doing with my daughter?"

Sam was as pale as he, and Danny had a bare moment to see Sam's mother in the open doorway, her father only inches behind, and anger twisting both of their faces. He heard Sam whisper, "Oh god," and in a half hysterical thought Danny wished she were saying it for a different reason. And then her parents were gone, the doorway empty, and Danny was looking down at her bewildered.

"Did that really happen?" he asked, and she nodded, closing her eyes for a second. "They just walked off."

"Danny," Sam said suddenly. "Have I ever told you that my father collects guns?"

He blinked at her, and less than a heartbeat later he was off of the bed and tugging his jeans on as he looked at her. "No, Sam. In two years you've never mentioned that. This is a hell of a time to finally share that."

She nodded, pulling the sheet higher over her as footsteps pounded back up the stairs. "You'd better run."

"Not without you," he said suddenly as he twitched his belt into place and reached a hand out to clamp on her arm. Sam choked out a laugh as she felt the sudden feeling of invisibility flooding her body, and then smothered a gasp as she saw the sheet falling smoothly back onto the bed as Danny lifted her above it to float them invisibly above the room.

She barely noticed that he'd grabbed up his shirt, that his shoes were clutched in the hand that wasn't holding on to her. But she did noticed the confused looks on her parents faces as they burst back through the door, her mother with mace, and her father with one of his World War II era rifles. But the room was empty, and there really wasn't any true evidence that anything had actually happened.

"Stay quiet," Danny whispered into her ear as he pulled her closer, watching as her parents looked around, checked the bathroom and closet and under the bed.

Her father even checked the locks on the windows before shouldering the ancient gun and muttering to himself and then dragging his wife along the room and down the hall. Then Sam found herself back on the floor, visible and naked as Danny scooped up her clothes and shoved them at her with a whispered, "Hurry."

Sam said nothing as she yanked her clothes on and then she was through the roof with Danny, just in time for her cell phone to start ringing in his hand. Wordlessly he handed it to her as they hovered at five hundred feet, and Sam quirked an eyebrow at him as she saw who was calling. Her parents.

"How's the trip?" she asked smoothly, nothing betraying that she knew exactly how their trip was.

Danny chuckled as he heard Sam's mother shooting questions loudly though the phone, and had to try not to drop lower as Sam answered as snarkily as she could before finally instructing her mother that she was hanging out with her best friend, and then hanging up.

"Smooth, Fenton. Very smooth," she said, and Danny shrugged.

"I find," he said as he lowered his mouth to hers, "That contingency plans are always good to have. That way you always have a way out."

Sam smiled as he kissed her. "_Very_ smooth."


	24. Breathe Again

10. Breathe Again

**Exodus, 2**

He made it two steps before slowing, three steps before stopping altogether and standing still, back to the bloody room and the crackle and hiss of machines and scalpels against his flesh. It was unavoidable, the curt orders, the sound of blood spattering the floor, the curse that came from one person's lips as the flatline continued. Danny swallowed and raised a hand to rub his eyes, wondering how he was crying since he was dead, and not even a real ghost.

He turned back to his body, to the people who were fighting so hard to save his life even as he was willing to let it slip away, and Danny took a step towards it. "But I'll think less of myself," he said softly, and Clockwork ran a hand along the smooth shat of his time staff.

"The pain will be immense," he said.

"I know," was Danny's equally quiet response.

"You could still die from it."

Danny bit his lip and took one more step back towards the body he was leaving behind. "Could is better than this."

He reached out a hand and let it ghost through the nurse who was desperately pumping an airbag over his face, and Danny closed his eyes when she didn't so much as shiver. The flatline continued and he watched as they shocked him again, now looking and seeing exactly what they were doing, the long wand-like paddles that were trying to stimulate his heart back into beating. The blood, the bone, the muscle and sinew and parts of his body that were never meant to see the light of day… All exposed for the people in the room who were fighting.

Like he wasn't.

Danny swallowed. "I'll think less of myself," he said again and stepped between two doctors. Clockwork said nothing, and without looking back Danny reached a hand out to touch a small patch of clean skin along his own shoulder. When next Danny knew, there was so much pain that he thought he would scream from it. Fire at his chest, and the most painful thing he could imagine coursing through his body.

He convulsed, his back arching against it and the scream was lost against the hard plastic that was down his throat, offset by the respirations that came from it, telling his body when to breathe, when not to. Doing it for him, he realized with a wild thought that he couldn't do it himself.

"I've got a pulse."

The words were from so very far away, buried behind the agony from his side, his chest, his back, his head, the broken pieces of his body as they all tried to tell him which was hurt. It was more than Danny could take, and he let himself drift away.


	25. Sport

51. Sport

Danny almost didn't believe it when Sam told him what she was doing for her volunteer hours that were a graduation requirement. And he flat out didn't believe when she told him she was going to keep doing it after graduation. But sure enough, she'd kept it up, arranging her classes at the university so that she could always make it in time for class, always be there for the kids.

He wasn't sure when he'd started arranging his schedule so he had the whole hour free, but he knew why he'd done it. At least the first time. He wanted to see it, proof positive with his own eyes that Sam Manson was teaching gymnastics to a handful of four year olds at the rec center. But she was, and he'd seen it.

He hadn't teased her about ever again after that. He'd swear that he still had the bruise one his shin from where she'd kicked him all those years ago.

He chuckled at himself where he sat on one of the rafters above the massive gym floor. All those years ago. It really wasn't much more than four, almost five. And for most of it Danny had sat on this beam that spanned the ceiling and watched her as she worked with the kids. Boys and girls, he'd been surprised at that. And grateful that his mother had never tried to force him into it. As it was he was grateful he didn't remember the ballet thing that was her wishful thinking when he'd been about the age of the children Sam was working with right now.

At one time he'd told himself it was because he liked watching her. She always wore the same thing for the classes. A shiny purple leotard and tiny little black shorts that probably shouldn't have been considered shorts at all. And that was all, unless he counted the way she pulled her hair back into a ponytail. But Danny had had years to decide that a rubber band didn't qualify as an article of clothing.

But he honestly couldn't say that the formfitting leotard was why he watched now. No, it was something else. Probably because he was in love with her, but that wasn't exactly why he did it anymore. It was just nice to watch the way she handled the children, from bumps and bruises, teaching them how to do the things she could do. And it had really blown his mind to find out that her mother had forced her to take gymnastics until she was thirteen. Had made his head explode when he realized that she must have kept up with it to still be able to flip herself around the way she was.

She did a backbend right then as he watched, a little girl giggling at the way Sam arching her back. And then Sam popped back upright, laughing along with the girl, and Danny couldn't help it. He laughed too, and he knew that she heard it as her head whipped around curiously before finally veering up and stopping dead still as she saw him relaxed in the shadows, one leg dangling and completely Fenton as he perched.

Danny knew he was busted, but also knew that she couldn't say anything while her class was still there. his self assured safety disappeared less than ten minutes later, and as soon as the last child, a little boy who'd only been coming for a few days, left, she turned and glared up at him, arching an eyebrow as she quirked a finger at him, beckoning him down. He dropped down, forcing his freefall to a slow drifting pace, so that he could land lightly in front of her with a sheepish grin and a hand to the back of his neck rubbing nervously as he looked everywhere but her eyes.

"How long have you been spying on me?" Sam asked, her voice surprisingly even despite the fact that Danny was sure she was ready to, at the very least, maim him.

"Um. About two weeks after you started?" he answered sheepishly, glancing up through the hair that was falling into his eyes. The startled look on her face almost floored, he'd so been expecting her to blow up, maybe even kick him in the shin despite the lack of boots. But instead she looked more like a fish out of water, and speechless in every way possible.

"You're going to be a really good mom," he said suddenly, surprising himself as he said it.

Sam blushed brilliant red. "Um… thanks? But not for a few years." The blush began to fade a little and she gave him a half smile. "I don't even know who the dad would be."

Danny nearly dropped dead when his mouth ran away with him again, this time saying, "I want to be," and this time Danny went bright red even as she did, finding himself unable to move away or even look down from her shocked violet eyes.

He wanted to apologize, even though he meant what he said. He wanted to run, to fly, to be anywhere but there. Anywhere but being forced to stare at the horrible surprise on her face, the surprise that told him, screamed at him, that she would never think of him like that. He wanted to do a million things, all of them centered around taking those four words back.

And then she reached a hand out and threaded it into his, and she smiled.

"I think that maybe we should go on a few dates first," she whispered softly as she stepped closer to him, looking up so that he could see the smile that was now on her face. "But I'd like that."

In retrospect, Danny would always tell their children that it was the most unintentional proposal he'd ever heard of. And that he was so glad that Sam had said yes.


	26. Advertisement

95. Advertisement

"I don't think that this is a good idea, Sam."

She sighed. "You never thought it was a good idea. But it's too late to stop it now, even if I wanted to." She narrowed her eyes and twitched a hand across her skirt. "And I don't want to."

"I can only imagine what your publisher would say if you tried to back out now," he said wryly as he glanced around the well lit room and the myriad people in an impressive variety of clothing.

Despite not being able to see outside of the hotel ballroom, tucker knew that it was already dark. The signing party had been scheduled for seven, and in New York City the sun set before that. Sam was being as gracious as she could be, but tucker could see the lines of tension through her body. The only time it ever left was when she glanced at the poster sized book jackets propped up around the room.

_The Adventures of a Ghost Named Phantom_ proclaimed loudly from them with a stylized impression of a boy on the front. Phantom was the only thing that had remained truly the same, and Tucker still thought that the truth was too close in the book Sam had written. It was almost their life story, up until the day that Danny had disappeared. Not into the ghost zone, at least. Just gone.

One day they'd woken up to panicked phone calls and Danny's family, all three of them, begging to be told where he was, why he'd left. Seventeen years old and just… gone. It had damn near killed Sam, Tucker hadn't been too much better. And in the almost eight years that had followed no one, not the police, the FBI, the private detectives, not even Sam and Tucker and their ghostly connections had found Danny. Not even a hint except for the infamous Danny Phantom sightings world-wide, though to the world he was still called Inviso-Bill.

Tucker sighed as he watched Sam smile, make small talk and sign yet another book before glancing around, much like she hoped that Danny would appear out of the wood work.

"Was this wise?" he asked as he sidled up to her, a glass of champagne in his hand that he sipped from before offering it to her. Sam shook her head at it and shrugged.

"I know he's still alive. We both do. He's alive, and he's out there." She grew quiet and still. "Maybe if he sees it, reads it, he'll come home."

Tucker picked up one of the hardcover books and flipped through it. "He won't read it, Sam."

She said nothing and Tucker sighed as he flipped the book open and held it out to her, fingers framing part of the synopsis inside the book's jacket. "This is what you hope he reads, isn't it?"

Sam looked away, then back, and Tucker frowned at the sudden bright sheen in her eyes, guilt eating into him at the pain he'd caused her. He saw her eyes flicker down and knew exactly what she was doing. She was reading the text that his fingers were bracketing, the text about how the Phantom's best friend fell in love with him.

The text that Tucker knew she had fought tooth and nail to have on the book jacket, no matter that it gave away a plot line more than two thirds through the book. The text that Tucker knew Sam was hoping and praying would bring her Phantom back to her.

She looked away again, and for once, Tucker said nothing as he closed the book and laid it back on the table.


	27. Through the Fire

89. Through the Fire

**Excerpted from **_**Playing with Fire**_

When he found her it was simply because he could feel the heat that radiated form the room she had ducked into. It had been hard to explain to her family, to any of their families, why they'd left home. Most of them had placed family, school, anything but dealing with the crisis at hand on the back burner. It wasn't like nobody knew that there was safety in numbers, and it was far safer to be around people like them than to try and eke out normalcy.

Danny had made that clear to all of them when he'd dropped all pretenses and told them his secret, the hell that he'd been through hiding it from his family while living right under their noses.

They'd all walked, they'd all pooled their resources. Sam and Paulina, much to their dismay, had been the ones to bring the most to the table. The warehouse they found themselves living in was largely due to them, and Danny was always amused when he saw Sam and Paulina getting along more and more as the contamination changed them more and more. For all that Paulina's mutation was shadow walking, Sam still seemed to gravitate to her.

Of course it might have been because Paulina seemed to have undergone such a drastic personality change when she found herself among the mutant residents of Amity Park. And that Paulina was so terribly grateful that she hadn't been the one to torch her house and nearly kill her family in the process.

"Go away," came Sam's muffled voice as Danny stepped through the door and stood there silently.

She didn't move as he watched her and for a moment Danny almost hated himself for driving her into this. He'd pressured her, he'd taken her right up to the breaking point. And she had run rather than lose control. Better that way, and since the room and the warehouse were still standing and not a smoldering heap, Danny thought that her control was improving.

"Sam," he said quietly.

"I said go away!" she yelled as she turned on him, flames licking from her fingertips and climbing up her arms. She shuddered and wrapped her arms around herself before huddling back against the wall, eyes closed so that she didn't have to see it.

"I'm not going anywhere," he said evenly. "I love you." The very words that had driven her to this point, and the kiss that had made him taste flames as his lips were seared by the heat of them.

She was afraid of it. That much was obvious, so terribly, wonderfully obvious. He knew, Tucker had been the one to realize it because Danny didn't have a clue, that Sam's emotions were directly linked to the flames that lived inside her now. When she felt intensely was when they seemed to come out. And what she felt for him was intense, intense enough that Danny would poke and prod at it to help her learn control. And more so because he wanted to be able to touch her, to love her.

"Don't say that," she whispered miserably as he moved to her and knelt down beside her. "I'm a monster, Danny."

She finally opened her eyes and Danny looked at them,. She wasn't, he knew she wasn't. She was still Sam, his Sam, and he could see the lavender of her eyes behind the orange-yellow fire that welled in them as he reached out to touch her cheek gently. Sam jerked away, holding her still flaming hand to her face where he'd touched her.

"Don't touch me." A desperate whisper that Danny was going to ignore.

"I want to touch you," he breathed as he reached for her again. "Let me touch you, Sam. Let me love you."

"I don't want to hurt you," she whispered, eyes desperate as fire shone through them, danced across the skin of her arms, shoulders and face.

Danny smiled and shifted to ghost, holding a hand out and taking hers into it, letting the cold from inside him quench the flames.

"You won't."

And this time when he leaned forward and kissed her, she kissed him back.

---

**For the record, **_**Playing with Fire**_** is NOT an X-Men derived idea, nor is it an X-Men crossover. It's derived from another kid's show, Static Shock, but still isn't a crossover. Static Shock just kind of made my wheels turn.**


	28. Test

77. Test

**Positive, 1**

If anyone had told the Fenton's that trouble was brewing in their house one sunny afternoon during one of the hottest summers Amity Park had ever had, they would have laughed. Then they'd have pulled out the ghost hunting gear and started searching for the ghost that surely was overshadowing the concerned citizen. As it was, the Fenton's were sitting around the kitchen table wondering if their son had finally gotten up the nerve to ask Sam out.

She'd shown up twenty minutes ago, nervous beyond belief and Danny had met her with worried eyes and immediately dragged her up to his room, closing the door behind them and blocking out any of the questions his parents or sister might have asked. In reality, the only question any of them had was why it had taken him six years to work up the courage. It wasn't like she'd ever dated anyone since the Gregor—Elliot—mistake in their freshman year of high school.

And, in fact, the trouble wasn't truly realized even at the sudden and painfully loud thump from the ceiling above their heads.

Jazz immediately wondered how Danny had botched it, and Maddie wondered if Danny had possibly fainted from the nerves as he tried to ask. Jack wondered if Danny had done something foolish, like not giving her his class ring when he asked, no matter that they'd graduated two years prior.

But the sight that greeted the three who rushed through Danny's door after a headlong race up the stairs wasn't anything they'd been expecting.

Danny on his knees with a perfectly dazed expression on his face was one sight that confused them. And Sam, huddled on the edge of the bed with her face in her hands, cheeks wet and eyes afraid only made it even worse.

In fact, it wasn't until they saw the box on the floor between the two, and the slim stick in Danny's hands as he looked at Sam, that clarity began.

And the bright pink plus sign really drove it home.

In fact, the only thing left to wonder was when Danny and Sam had started dating, much less having sex.


	29. Under the Rain

30. Under the Rain

It was a shame, really, that the mall was so badly damaged. Piles of rubble drifted everywhere they went as the hunted out the ghost that was responsible. In her more sane moments, Maddie knew that the hunt for the Phantom was irrational at best. But after nearly four years of hunting the ghost, no matter that he hadn't done anything overtly evil or even wrong since the aborted attack on the mayor, it was ingrained to blame things on Phantom. And to try and take them out on him.

Jack never even considered the more human aspects of the hunt as he scrambled across a pile of concrete, following the trail of green blood and broken walls in his eagerness to catch his quarry. But then, Jack's obsession was legendary, even to the point where he could ignore every external when he was on the trail. He didn't hear his wife instructing him to be careful, nor did he hear Tucker's order that Jack stop hunting Phantom, Sam's desperate plea as he moved past her with more grace and agility than a man his size should have had.

"Come on, Sam," Tucker said to her as he tugged at her arm, trying to drag her bodily to her feet.

"I can't, Tuck," was the only reply he got as the slim woman sank back down to the dusty floor, pulling at the hem of her jeans so that he could see a bloody gash across her shin, down to the bone.

He grimaced and nodded as he turned and trailed after the Fenton's, his breath coming in short gasps. The battle had raged for far longer than the half hour the Fenton's knew about it. He wondered as he slid down a large piece of drywall covered wall, if the Fenton's would even care if they knew how hard Phantom—Danny—had tried to keep the fight from ever making it close in to the residential parts of town. He'd failed, but he'd tried.

And now there was no one to watch his back as his parents gunned for him.

He slipped down another fallen wall, this one letting him pass through the exterior wall of the mall and out into the miserable downpour that set Tucker shivering as he trailed after the Fenton's, both much faster than him, full of energy where Tucker was on the last dregs of his own. He cupped a hand to his side as a stitch stabbed at it mercilessly, the bobbing orange and teal jumpsuits not too far ahead of him as he stumbled through rain and muck.

And then they were right in front of him, stopped dead still as Tucker wondered numbly why. He blinked, rubbed a finger across the rain spotted lenses of his glasses, then looked again.

Danny. He was crouched in the rain, kneeling practically, one arm hanging uselessly as he grabbed the misshapen shoulder with his free hand. There was a crack and a loud pop as Danny wrenched at it, tugging it hard and viciously back into its socket. Tucker bit his lip in sympathy at the muffled cry Danny gave as he drooped forward for a moment, hair straggling across his face as he wiped at his eyes with the hand of his good arm.

"Danny?" Maddie called to him, and his head whipped around, eyes wide and blue and so startled.

He could have tried to stop them, but in the end there really was nothing that Tucker could do. As Danny rose from his crouch, hand still cradling his other arm close, it was plain to see that he was injured more than just the dislocation. There was a long gash down his face, clear from one temple, across a cheek and sliding across the bridge of his nose to trail off down his cheek. Bright red, mingled with rain, and tinged in green. Tucker bit his lip and glanced from Danny to his parents.

They, too, were as silent as Danny was. There was no way to hide the fact that the gaping wound was healing before their very eyes. Danny closed his own eyes and turned away.


	30. Traps

66. Traps

It started as a game. A vicious game to be sure, but a game nonetheless. The lock-in had started with such great promise. True, it was the entire junior class, trapped overnight, on a weekend, _inside_ the school. But with only a handful of teachers to monitor some two hundred students, they found it more than easy to slip away. And that without using Danny's particular talents.

It had evolved into a longwinded game of hide and seek, usually with Danny as the seeker because Tucker's boasts were very true. If Danny didn't want to be found, he wasn't going to be found. He was just good like that, or so Tucker said, knowing that he faced the pounding of his life from Danny and Sam both if he let anything slip about Danny's ghostly half.

But the boasting had an unexpected consequence.

The consequence of being forced to play hide and seek with the A-List, and worst of all, Dash Baxter. It wouldn't have been so bad, except that Tucker's bragging had apparently grated on the jock's nerves. And that Dash had turned into whatever was the next step from bully. At least Danny knew that he was safe, and Sam and Tucker too because they always went for unconventional hiding spots. Their version of self-defense against his own unorthodox seeking methods.

He was safe. At least until he heard Sam scream.

From above, and since he was on the second floor that meant that she was on the roof. He bit his lip as he let himself go visible and darted out of the classroom he'd taken refuge in, wanting to just fly up through the ceiling but knowing that doing so would be a death sentence for his secret identity. Instead Danny ran for the nearest roof access, stairs that were only a few rooms down the hall, and darted up them as he cursed Sam and her lack in fear of heights. That was exactly why she usually chose her rooftop eyrie to hide, and Danny knew it.

The next scream, right as he was halfway up the stairs, was a shrill and panicked, "Danny!" that made him run even faster, not caring in the least if he was letting his ghost powers assist, begin to take over as his feet flew across the stairs so that he could burst out of the door to the roof. What he found made his heart freeze in his chest, and Danny's breath caught in his throat as he saw Sam, dangerously close to the low ledge at the edge of the roof, one arm caught up and twisted behind her back, the other clutching frantically at the only thing she could get her hands on to try and balance herself: Dash's letter jacket.

"Come on, Manson," Dash was taunting her. "You're already obsessed with ghosts. Just one little fall, and you can _be_ one."

Tear were in her eyes and Danny thought it was killing him just to watch them start to slither down her cheeks. "Please, Dash," she begged as he twisted her arm harder and her body writhed, very against her will, that much closer to the edge.

"Say it again, Manson. I like hearing you beg me."

"Leave her alone, Dash," he all but growled. The other boy turned a little and smiled when he saw Danny tensed and ready to fight. It wasn't really much more than a baring of teeth, and Danny bit back a faint laugh that wanted to well as he realized that Dash actually thought Danny was afraid of him.

There was no way the bully could know that Danny dealt with much more dangerous foes on an almost daily basis, and that his only fear was for Sam.

"Who's gonna make me?" he drawled. "You?"

Danny didn't say anything, just began forcing his way through the rest of the A-List where they stood gathered around. He shouldered past Kwan, slithered inexplicably between Sarah and Paulina. He very nearly decked Joey when he tried to stop him and neatly sidestepped Star as she made a move to do something, whether to harm or help he couldn't say. And before his heart had beat more than three times Danny was within arm's reach of Sam and Dash, and reaching out to grab Sam by her free shoulder, to pinch at Dash's wrist where he was holding to her.

Within moments she was tucked safely behind him and Dash's nostrils were flaring in anger as he took a step towards Danny, fists raised and bunched. Without a thought Danny shoved Sam back, not even noticing that she stumbled into Star and that, instead of pushing the girl away, Star pulled her closer and steadied her. Danny was ducking beneath a wildly thrown punch and spinning as he went to automatically block anything still coming his way as Dash lumbered around, his bulk not helping him in the least against his fleet of foot and far more agile opponent.

"I'm gonna get you," he muttered as he lunged forward, and Danny sidestepped at the last second, only in that moment realizing that Dash was headed over the edge if he didn't do something.

Paulina was screaming, and Star was yelling at Sam for some reason, and Danny's hand was reaching out and snatching at the hated letterman jacket, tugging at it roughly, not caring that it tore, only caring that in that last moment he pulled Dash back and swung him towards the safety of the center of the roof, the rest of the A-List. He didn't even realize how close he was to the edge, to the ledge, that caught him as he let go of Dash's jacket, and his world tilted.

"Danny!" Sam was screaming his name, and Danny's mind was racing, blurring the lines between rational and insane as she thrust a hand out at him.

Danny almost reached out for her, but stopped himself before he could. He would only drag her down with him. He could save himself, go ghost, fly away. Fall intangibly and never actually hit the ground. He could expose his secret to the world and spend the rest of his life being hunted by anyone and everyone.

Or he could keep his secret, and keep Sam safe. The only cost… Danny found Sam's eyes, brilliantly purple in the fading sun.

And he fell.


	31. Pain

88. Pain

It had been hard to watch, hard to know that the silent slim figure was really his Sam. His Sam. What a joke. She'd never been his, never would be. If she woke up—no—_when_ she woke up, he'd be there. He'd tell her that the bastard was dead, that he'd never touch her, never hurt her again. Or better that he let Tucker tell her, since _he_ was the whole reason she'd been… targeted. Trust Vlad to know his truest weakness, to use it against him.

And trust him to return the favor, a thousand fold.

Vlad was murmuring to himself, and his programmed imitation of his mother, and Danny shifted in place as he waited. The walls were well made, thick, even on the inside, and Danny had no fear of discovery. One of Vlad's own weaknesses had been his pride in all things technological that he employed at his home. Stolen and modified, never created.

Vlad had never considered that the modifications that allowed him to roam so freely would allow Danny the same privilege. It was a conceit that Danny didn't think twice about taking advantage of. Anything for Sam. Anything if she'd only just wake up.

The murmuring stopped, footsteps neared, and Danny tensed as he listened from inside the wall. Water at the sink, the faint hiss of foam, and Danny's eyes narrowed into dangerous slits as his face slipped through the mirror. Even after all of the years he'd spent with Vlad alternately coercing him to his side, or trying to kill him, Danny had yet to see any evidence that the older halfa had any ability in the sensing of other ghosts.

The risk he'd so willingly taken had paid off and Vlad continued carefully measuring shaving foam into his open palm. The can was sat on the edge of the sink with a dull clink, and Vlad's hand began to reach for the straight razor next to it.

"You always were old fashioned," Danny said, his voice low as the rest of him slipped through the mirror to stand bisected by the sink as Vlad's took a startled step back. Shaving foam plopped to the floor in fluffy white gobs, and Danny took another step forward.

Vlad chuckled tightly. "You become more like me with every day that passes, Daniel."

He smiled at this, and Danny almost laughed at the nearly frightened expression that crossed the older man's face. Nearing fifty now, and much more aware of his mortality. Without a second thought Danny took another step, this time _into_ Vlad's body. The part of Vlad that was Plasmius, mostly dormant up until the moment foreign ectoplasm invaded, reared his head and fought back. Even with its metaphysical teeth bared Danny tamped it down with ease, too much ease. For the first time in his life Danny wondered whose ghost half had actually won the battle for dominance in that misbegotten alternate life that had never come to be.

The answer didn't bear thinking about, and Danny smirked as he opened his eyes—Vlad's eyes—and stared at his flashing green eyes in the ornate mirror of the bathroom. When he spoke the voice was foreign, his tones and inflections completely butchering Vlad's more cultured and sepulchral manners.

"Looks like the shoe's on the other foot, doesn't it, old man?" Danny asked as he stared at the face in the mirror, one hand reaching for the razor.

He could feel the fighting inside, almost understand the screaming, pleading, begging that Vlad was doing as he realized the murderous intent in his longtime rival, would be son and apprentice. Danny ignored it, ignored the way his eyes were beginning to slip from bright, clear green into something much closer to amber and red. The razor opened with a snick and Danny glanced along the shining edge before staring back into the mirror, smirking at the reflection.

"It was between us, Vlad," he said softly. "They weren't a real threat, and you know it. Your life became forfeit the moment you laid a hand on her." Silence from inside, and Danny closed his eyes against the rage that welled sharp and hot within him.

"You know the one really good thing you taught me?" he asked the creature inside him conversationally as he ran a finger down the blade of the razor, testing its sharpness. Fear screamed at him, and regret, though Danny could ignore that. His eyes flashed opened again, now a blazing crimson that was barely touched by the faintest swirls of emerald.

His voice was low and harsh as he whispered, "High pain tolerance."

Then the razor was biting deeply into the flesh of Vlad's throat, his throat, both of their throats, and blood was flowing in a crimson wash that matched the fury in his eyes as he watched it pour down the front of Vlad's simple blue pajamas, dampening them into black. The razor bit again, the rest of the way across, leaving a jagged gaping mouth in its wake, and Danny watched in satisfaction as the body fell away from him as the blood wept down to pool around his boots, and the body.

When he looked again at the mirror the only red he saw were flecks of blood on his neck, and hints of ectoplasmic blood that was his dotting the line where the razor had crossed. He glanced down at the body, then back up at the mirror, the razor dropping into the sink from his bloody gloves with a chink that echoed in the silence.

"For you, Sam," he whispered. He slipped back through the wall.

---

**Cordria, this one's for you. Because you aren't the only one who gets to be evil. :D And I promised.**


	32. Obsession

71. Obsession

"She's been gone for months," he said softly as he settled onto the grass. Next to Tucker Danny shrugged, silent. But then, he'd been silent a lot since Sam had disappeared.

There'd been no ransom note, despite her parents' vocal insistence that she'd been kidnapped. Yet one more way they never placed their daughter above their social standing: they'd never been more famous than when the headlines read about the Manson heiress gone missing. Her grandmother swore up and down that she'd run away. Not that anyone who knew Sam might not believe it. The slim gothic girl had threatened it more than once, swearing that she'd leave the second she turned eighteen.

But she wasn't going to turn eighteen for a little more than a year. Her seventeenth birthday was only weeks away. And she'd been gone for almost four months.

Tucker bit his lip and glanced over at his silent friend, wondering if now he could find the courage to ask what he'd wanted to ask all along. What he assumed was true, what he knew Jazz assumed was true, too. He took a breath and then let it out. Too hard. It was too hard. It would almost be like admitting that he knew she wasn't coming back. And that was something Tucker wasn't willing to do.

"Danny?"

His voice didn't startle the silence away, and Danny barely met Tucker's eyes when he glanced over at his friend and raised an eyebrow as if to say, _Go ahead, ask, we both know you want to._

"It was a ghost, wasn't it? It was a ghost that took her."

Danny didn't say anything for the longest time, just sat there as the known facts, the lack of evidence ran around inside Tucker's mind. No notes, ransom, goodbyes of any kind. No struggle, no missing clothes, no… No nothing. It looked exactly as if she'd be walking into her room any second, even after the police and FBI had been through it with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. It was only a wonder that no one had mentioned that possibility, especially since it was Amity Park.

For a while Tucker thought that the silence was going to be his answer. Not that he couldn't translate it into an answer on his own, but there was that piece of him that needed an answer. And actual answer, yes or no, that Sam was _gone_ and not just gone.

The sun was nearly setting when Danny broke his silence, his voice harsh with disuse. "Yes." Tucker turned to him, eyes dark and jaded with the pain. "Yes, a ghost took her," Danny muttered, stopping with a painful pause. "She's in a better place now."

He didn't manage to find his voice before Danny had shifted into his other self and disappeared into nothing.

---

It was dark, and the flip of the switch didn't change it for her. He'd made sure of that. A blindfold unless he wanted it off. Only when he was there. Hands bound above her head, he tsked at the bloody flesh beneath the manacles. She'd been fighting again.

Without a word he found a bowl and a rag, filling it with warm water and settling to the bed next to her to carefully and gently sponge her wrists clean. She whimpered and opened her mouth, only managing to say, "D—" before his fingers were dancing across her lips to silence her.

"No, Sam. Remember what I told you."

Quietly he went back to making sure that the scrapes were clean before setting the bowl and now bloody pink rag to the side, a faint smile gracing his lips. With a sigh he ran a careful hand down one of her arms, letting it slip and drag across smooth, unfettered skin from elbow to collarbone before dropping a little lower to cup the rounded flesh of her breast.

Her mouth gasped opened and he saw how she had to bite her lower lip to stop from begging, screaming, or just crying. His smile widened. "Very good, Sam."

Without a second thought he reached up and eased the blindfold up watching as she blinked owlishly up at him, violet eyes shining as they learned the light again.

"D—"

"Don't," he said harshly, his hand gripping her painfully as his other forced her to look directly at him. "Don't say it, don't ask, don't beg. You know that. I'll take care of you."

Her chest heaved with a shuddering sob, and he stared down at her, watching mesmerized at the way her skin moved, pale but for where his affections had left darker bruises on it. It was only fitting. She was his, she needed to wear his marks. After all, she was the object of his obsession.

Danny had never been more content.

---

**Happy birthday magpie8spook. Here is your unfettered evil. I hope you like it. **_**Subtle**_** unfettered evil, but unfettered evil nonetheless.**


	33. Are You Challenging Me?

74. Are You Challenging Me?

**By quasi-request, I've created the fight with Technus that is reference in passing in **_**Revenge of the Ice Cubes**_** (the fifth installment of the **_**Ice Cubes**_** arc). It's sixteen paragraphs in, if anyone desires to locate it. This one is for Shadewolf7.**

---

"He just had to pick a fight in the middle of the hallway, didn't he?" Danny muttered as he winced. Sam tried to glance out around him but let out a muffled squeak when Danny's arm blocked her abruptly and his body nearly slammed into her.

"Let me help, Danny!" she hissed in an urgent whisper.

"No," he said tightly as he straightened and turned to keep her Tucker behind him, his back and side on fire where the computer monitor and tower had slammed into him.

Down the hall a new and improved Technus was floating with the rest of the school's computers swirling about him. Electric blue energy crackled from electronic to electronic, and the ghost was cackling with his high pitched nasally laugh as students and teachers alike cowered in fear, some behind closed classroom doors, a few in the bathrooms, the rest still in the hallway. They were pressed against the walls in between banks of lockers, one tucked next to the water fountain.

Not many, but enough for Danny to wish them all to hell for not having found somewhere better to his. Somewhere that would let him change into his other half and fight Technus as efficiently as he could. Instead, he was trapped into doing it as Fenton. He'd be lucky if he could move by the time it was over.

"Tucker, hurry up!" Danny called as he batted at a smaller tower that was headed his way and then ripped it out of the air and tossed it back at the other ghost, letting his own ghostly strength help hurl the heavy object.

The technogeek was crouched in front of Lancer's classroom door, PDA in hand and fingers racing the stylus across it. "I'm trying! But he's running with Portals Vista. It's going to take a few; I don't know my way around this system. It's got…"

That was where Danny promptly disengaged his brain and concentrated on the ghost at the end of the hall instead of trying to understand what his best friend was saying. He felt Sam's hand, hot and gentle on his side as he tensed, readying himself for a sprint towards Technus to try and knock him out of the air. But the tension was too acute as her hand brushed across where he'd been hit.

That alone told Danny that tackling the ghost in midair, _through_ a few dozen more of the same thing that had hurt him so, was a very bad idea. But he didn't have an arsenal to fight from a distance, not without pulling on his ghost half. And that, he couldn't do.

Not unless someone's life was at stake and he had no other options.

"Oh, hell," he murmured and closed his eyes for a minute. When he opened them it was still the same. Technus, holding some random girl up by her backpack, and her too frightened to scream. Or to speak, ask for help, thrash… anything really.

"Why does this always happen to me?" The question floated through the air and Danny sighed, then cracked his neck and glanced at Tucker again. "Tucker…" A warning in his tone, but no more.

"I'm trying," was Tucker's tight response.

Then the girl screamed. And Danny couldn't _not_ do anything because Technus was actually threatening her instead of just trying to wreak havoc on the school's electronics.

With a sigh and a wishful prayer that Tucker could crack into the ghost's operating system soon, Danny pulled himself away from Sam and sprinted down the hall. Flying computers be damned, he leaped, arrowing his body as carefully as he could. Not, however, to hit Technus. Instead he wrapped his arms around the nameless girl and his momentum yanked her from Technus' grasp and hurtled them to the ground.

Danny let the momentum take them both, hitting the ground with her above him and then rolling for all he was worth until they were halfway down the hall again, Sam and Tucker at the other, and the girl being shoved into the arms of the boy cowered behind the water fountain.

The cords and wires that had been threatening the girl began to move menacingly toward Danny and he could only grit his teeth. "You don't want to play fair? Fine."

Then he ripped the water fountain off the wall.

He flung it at the ghost, heedless of the water that was pouring from the severed pipe at the wall, putting as much behind it as he could. Danny smirked in satisfaction when it slammed through the line of computers around Technus and then hit the ghost, knocking him to the ground and keeping him there as the blow kept him from remembering that he could phase through it and be on his feet—figuratively speaking—in no time.

There was a whir and Tucker shouted, "Got it, he's powering down!"

He gritted his teeth against the fiery ache in his side as he spun on his heel and darted a row of lockers down. Fingers wrapped around one of the locks and jerked, yanking it off of the locker before Danny was swinging it open and jerking a Fenton thermos out and racing back towards the technoghost before he could try and rally himself against Tucker's power down.

But it seemed like he couldn't. In the space of three seconds Technus melted from his latest version back into mullet man, and then back into the weakling he was before. And moments later he was screaming as Danny uncapped the thermos and turned it onto Technus, sucking him in and capping it after.

"_Bridge to Terebithia_, people! What happened here?"

Somehow Danny just couldn't bring himself to care about Lancer and his demands as he stood there, one hand to his side, panting vaguely against the pain and the effort that the water fountain trick had entailed. But a great deal of his nonchalance was probably to do with the pretty, concerned amethyst eyes down the hall staring right into his. He smiled faintly.

It disappeared as Lancer said, "Mr. Fenton! Detention! Every day until spring break!"

Then again, maybe he should have let Technus wreck the school.

---

**I figured since Vista is the newest version of Windows ® and Portals is the spoof, then it was only logical to make it Portals Vista. Just an FYI…**


	34. Hero

68. Hero

**Andy's Tale, 6**

It would have been a nice day at the park if it hadn't been for Skulker. New upgrades, and he just _had_ to test them when Danny was supposed to be playing hide and seek with Andy. And the game had been so promising—what else with two ghost hybrids playing it? But, and Danny truly hated that word right now, he couldn't just stand by and let Skulker wreak havoc on the town. Especially not when he'd proclaimed that he was hunting Danny Phantom. Again.

It really got old.

Worse than that, it had taken Danny the better part of a half hour to get his hands on his thermos. It wasn't normally a problem, he almost always carried one in his ghost form. Force of habit, he supposed, from years of ghost hunting taking its toll. He'd lost it in the first few moments of taking to the air. New missiles that apparently home in on anything with the technological signature peculiar to anything Fenton designed.

But he had it back and Skulker was firm within his sights, wide open and begging to be locked away inside the thermos so that Danny could go back and play with his son. Skulker protested as Danny caught him, but the half ghost ignored it in favor of glancing around to make sure Andy was still where he'd been told to wait, safe and sound. He was, and Danny could even ignore the smattering of applause witnesses sent up as he floated a dozen feet above ground.

Minutes later he was sneaking up through the earth and settling back to it as himself, sans ghostliness, behind Andy he laughed as Danny set his own ghost sense off.

"Hey," he said quietly as he reached down to ruffle the boys golden hair as he smiled up at his father. "Sorry about that. Couldn't be helped."

Andy smiled wider. "You hafta be a hero sometimes. Aunt Jazz said so."

Danny chuckled. "Yeah. Only sometimes, though."

Andy shook his head, his smile turning more serious, and Danny was reminded of the solemn child he'd been mere weeks ago. Before Andy had brought his mother into Andy's life, and when it was just Jazz and him and Andy for those short weeks after Star's death.

"Nuh uh, Daddy. You're my hero _all_ the time."

---

**Inspired from a drabble written by Me The Anon One. Chapter 6, **_**Keeping Secrets**_**, of her **_**100 Drabble Challenge**_**. With her permission I've taken the single drabble and made into something else.**


	35. I Can't

73. I Can't

She was sobbing as she clawed her way out of the dream. There was no way of telling how long she'd been trapped in the Sandman's realm, no telling how long she'd be fighting her way out before he'd come to rescue her. Never mind wondering how he'd known to come. That was Danny, the hero every second that he breathed. Her hero, and Sam gasped as she breathed in and turned to the warm body lying next to her.

How he'd known…

She shook her head and reached an arm over to touch his shoulder. "Danny?" Oh, how she hated the waver in her voice. But the waver was there, and it muted itself as her hand shook where it lay on his still form.

"Danny? Wake up, Danny." The waver was becoming a tremor, and her hand was shaking as she forced her body upright.

She knew she couldn't have been asleep for very long. There was no sense of hunger or soreness that she associated with moving after too long in the same position. She was still warm, too, meaning that it hadn't been very long at all because Sam never slept with any type of covering if she could help it. She always kicked it off before too long.

"Danny." Frantic now as he didn't respond in the least. No fluttering of eyes, no movement at all beneath his lashes and lids. Just a pale, slack face as he lay next to her.

But Danny... Now he wasn't warm. He'd been warmer just a few seconds ago when she first touched him. And Sam knew that she hadn't seen him take a breath. Her heart froze in her chest, her breath caught in her throat until a moment later she felt his chest rise beneath her hand. But the fear didn't leave, because Danny wasn't waking up, and that single breath had been far to labored for him not to still be in trouble.

She bit her lip and pulled at his arm. "Danny. Danny, please, wake up!" Nothing but silence until it was shattered by a faint murmur from her dresser.

"He's not going to wake up."

Her head swiveled in surprise, and the sudden stab of fear and panic made her choke out a laugh. "Danny? What are you…"

"I came to check on you before I went home," he said again softly as her eyes flew back to the still Danny next to her on the bed.

"But you—He…"

"I'm just the half of him that's already dead."

"Already…" She stared at him for a moment, his hazmat a shadow in the dark, the symbol burning at her as if to etch itself into her brain more than it already was. Then she turned back to Danny, her Danny, and she counted to ten, watching. And to ten again. And again, and again and again.

"He's not breathing," she whispered hoarsely, and stared frantically at Danny on her dresser. "He's not breathing. Help him breathe, please, help him breathe."

The ghost only stared back, eyes a dull green. "I can't. I don't remember how."


	36. Night

32. Night

**Excerpted from **_**Hollowpoint**_

He was an idiot. A stupid, moronic, overbearing, jack-assed idiot. And at that, Danny had only started with the mental berating. He'd had a late start, having spent the better part of the evening filling out paperwork and glaring at anyone who even _looked_ like they were going to ask him about the incident. And the one time one of the duty officers had, Danny had damn near snapped the poor bastard's head off.

That had driven him out into the cold but snowless Chicago night to try and walk off some of his anger and frustration.

It was a good thought, a brilliant idea that was working out in completely the opposite direction he'd wanted. Instead of feeling even the least bit justified about what he'd done, what he'd said, he only felt worse. And on top of that he was cold. He was cold and angry and miserable. Just abso-fucking-lutely miserable. Because it really was his fault, when it came down to it.

Supposed to be a nice calm night. The most strenuous assignment that had been dropped on his desk was to pick up a dealer for questioning. Nothing big. Frisk him, confiscate anything he had on him, then take him back to the station and toss him in lockup to sweat for a few hours before playing good cop and bad cop. Hell, he'd even been instructed not to charge the guy if he _was_ carrying any ice.

Danny was only supposed to arrest him if he and Sam (he was never going to be able to think of her as Manson) could get a confession out of him.

But Sam had gotten a little more than a confession. The case was less than a day old; the vic had been shot execution style with a little .22 that had distinct crosshair filings at the end of the barrel. That had been what Danny had recognized first as the dealer had pulled the tiny weapon and aimed it at Sam's head as he pulled her close into him.

The second thing was that the son of a bitch had touched her in anger.

Given that, Danny couldn't understand why she was so angry with him for shooting the guy. Wasn't like he'd died. They'd stopped the bleeding. As soon as he was released from the hospital he was going straight to the jail to be tossed into the population until his trial. And after that he'd go to prison, because the whole scene had been caught on tape, and the Chicago DA didn't take nicely to people threatening cops with deadly force.

It was after that the fireworks had started. With Sam yelling at him that she could take care of herself and he needed to quit treating her like a rookie. She'd been a cop for years, and dammit, he was so freaking overprotective.

It would have been alright then, she was blowing off steam. Near death experiences mostly made people, even cops, jittery and on edge. She was looking for someone she could trust to vent those sudden nerves on without being sick. And he'd turned it around on her. Blown up, yelled and hollered and made a scene that was going to have him in the captain's office in the morning.

He'd called her a terrible cop. Said she was worse than a rookie. That she should have found the gun on the frisk, never mind that they'd only just walked up to the asshole when he'd flipped and pulled it. Told her she was incompetent and arrogant and that he was going to request a new partner as soon as he got back to the station. Insulted her intelligence and then, worst of all, asked her if she even remembered how procedure went for talking to a perp on the streets.

That had been the straw that broke the camel's back. He knew very well that she remembered it. But it was a subtle dig at her lack of memory before the last twelve years. She didn't know he knew, and he knew it, and he used it against her anyway just because he was angry and frustrated and…

And scared. Scared that he could have lost her. Not that he had her, but he couldn't lose her. Not again.

How he found himself on the front stoop of her brownstone he'd never know. But he was grateful, and more grateful when he didn't have to be buzzed into the warmer air of the hallway. It had started to snow just a bit in the last hour, and the flakes melted against his hair, his jacket as he trudged up to the third floor and knocked hesitantly on her door.

He had to wait. But he'd wait forever if it gave him the chance to apologize.

The door opened and there she stood in nothing but an oversized shirt. That in itself was enough to make his brain go numb. Long pale lengths of leg peeking out from beneath the hem. She was taller than he remembered. Somehow he always remembered her as petite as she'd been as a freshman. But she'd gained inches, and it showed in her legs, the length of her torso. The slender grace of her arm as it rested against the door as she stared at him with sleepy violet eyes.

But the real kick in the gut was that it was one of his shirts. An old shirt from high school, one that he'd probably left at her house during one of their sleepovers. Maybe one she'd worn home after a nasty ghost fight where her clothes were trashed. And the way it looked… He'd love to see how she looked in any of his shirts. Or out of them.

"Manson," he said softly.

She gave him a questioning look. "Dan. What are you doing here?"

He gave a half hearted shrug. "I wanted to make sure you're okay."

She arched an eyebrow. "Do I look okay?"

He swallowed and blinked and shrugged again. "I, uh… I wanted to apologize. I was out of line. I had no right to say anything I said, especially when it's not true."

And he wanted to replace the memory of tear-filled amethyst eyes with something else. If not happiness, at least something not as painful as that.

"You came by to say you're sorry," she said slowly. He nodded. "At two in the morning?"

"Ah, no watch?" His smile itself was apologetic.

She bit her lip. And then smiled. The first real smile he'd seen on her since she'd been assigned to him and he'd started treating her like something less than a rookie. "Accepted, Dan." She gave him a another smile, a little more confident than the last.

He could only smile carefully back.


	37. Fairy Tale

61. Fairy Tale

"I won't leave you, Sam," Danny insisted through clenched teeth. "If you want me to go back you might as well kill me. I won't."

"Danny." She murmured his name on a sigh. "You have to go back. You don't belong here yet."

He glared at her, his eyes flickering from blue to green and back again. Danny growled, the sound almost feral as he raked a hand through his dark hair and turned away from her. "I'm still half ghost, you know." It sounded weak and desperate as he said it, and if it could have, Sam's breath would have caught in her throat.

As it was, it couldn't, and her voice was gentle as she reached an oh so pale hand out to touch his shoulder. "But half of you is still alive, Danny. You _have_ to go back."

He turned on her, eyes wild. "No, I don't! Vlad's gone, the ghost portal is under control, and Mom and Dad have a freaking arsenal. I want to stay with you," he pleaded.

She was perilously close to tears as she reached a hand up to push his hair from his face, her hand curving down his cheek. Danny closed his eyes, the utter pain that crossed his face making the tears start to fall. "I wish you could," Sam whispered.

"It's time." Clockwork's tone was as dry as ever, almost as if he'd never watched the young lovers fighting to live and die. It was almost ironic that it was the dead fighting for the half alive.

"Sam," Danny begged, willing her to stay on willpower alone.

She quirked a smile at him. "I love you, Danny. Don't forget that."

And like that she was gone.

---

Clockwork's inspirational words were nothing but bull. Danny had believed that for weeks and weeks, until the days became months and Sam had been gone for half a year. School started again, and life moved forward for everyone who had survived the second ghost invasion of Amity Park. Most had, only a handful had died.

But Danny tried not to think about it too much, if at all, choosing to concentrate on the extraneous instead. For instance, his locker combination. Something so simple that, for the life of him, he couldn't remember. Nor did he dare reach through the door for his next book, so instead he could only stand there and stare at the shiny red paint, the mocking stainless steel of the lock as he racked his brain for the three numbers that would lead to his education.

"Oh, my god." A girl's voice, and one he didn't easily recognize. Danny ignored it for a moment until he thought he heard it say, "_The_ Danny Phantom!"

"I'm sorry, what?" he asked as he finally focused on the girl standing next to him. She was slender, reminding him painfully of Sam until he realized that perhaps that was the only thing similar. Her eyes were as blue as his, and her hair was a bright strawberry blond. And she certainly didn't dress the same was Sam had. If there was anything black on this girl Danny would be surprised.

She was entirely too… sunny.

"It's just amazing to meet Danny _Fenton_," she said cheerily as Danny wondered if it had been his imagination that made her stress his last name. He could have sworn she said Phantom before…

"I've heard so much about you," and Danny knew that she didn't actually mean exactly what she said. It's almost like it was _inevitable_ that I'd get this locker."

Danny could only blink as she reached out and spun the dial on what had been Sam's locker, not even thinking twice before popping the lock on hers. Another cheery smile and she was offering to help with his, expertly finding the numbers he still couldn't remember, and patting his arm when it opened spilling books and papers to the floor.

He thought he might have protested, but even that thought was lost as she nudged one of his books with a sneaker and arched a pale brow up at him.

"Well, I suppose you do study now." Not that that wasn't cryptic enough. "Well, it could be worse. You could be dead all the way."

And this time Danny knew his mouth was hanging open at her.

"What are staring for, Danny?" the girl asked, and before he could even answer she just chuckled. "Still clueless, aren't you?"

"Saaaaam?" Her name was a long drawn out gasp for breath, and Danny's world swum for a minute.

The girl smiled at him, taking pity as she winked one cobalt blue eye at him. "Just between you, me, and Clockwork. Perky blond types are not my style."

And it may not have been, but the canary eating grin she gave him certainly was.


	38. Flowers

31. Flowers

It started with a flower. No, actually it started with a plant that wasn't ready to bloom. A birthday gift from him to her, and almost an anniversary gift since he'd first asked her out four years ago the day after her birthday. He would have asked her on her birthday, but they'd fallen asleep watching movies with Tucker, and Danny had always found it kind of hard to ask a girl out when they were both asleep.

Not that he'd ever tried, of course, but still.

He said it was an African Violet, and that when he'd seen one it had made him think of her. So naturally he just had to get her one. Not that she didn't already have dozens of flowers—some of them violets, at that—growing in her greenhouse already. But it was thoughtful, and he'd insisted that she keep this particular one in her room, on the nightstand next to her bed.

That request had confused Sam, because Danny was rarely that adamant about anything outside of the ghost hunts she and Tucker joined him in. she'd wanted to put it out in the greenhouse and coax the bloom along. And yet there it was, next to her bed, budding and beginning to turn more and more colorful every day as it began to mature.

More confusing was the way he asked her every morning if it had bloomed.

She'd already noticed that morning that it was looking unusually… alive. It was the best word that she could think of, especially since the petals had been unfurling since the night before. There were still a few that stubbornly held together, but she thought she could see the bright yellow of the stamen through the white and violet of them. Almost, but she wasn't sure.

But she was sure when she finally got out of the shower. Still dripping wet and wrapped in her towel, she stood and stared down at the brightly colored violet. It couldn't be helped that her face was wet with more than water, and Sam's hand shook as she reached for the phone and dialed Danny's number from memory.

"Morning," he said on a yawn, and she almost smiled at that.

"Danny? What kind of African Violet is this?" she asked, wondering if he could hear the hope in her voice.

He was quiet for a long time, and then finally, "It bloomed?"

She nodded, and somehow never even thought about him not being able to see her response.

He chuckled a little, and she could hear the tension in it. "I guess it's the 'Will you marry me?' kind," he finally murmured.

There was no way Sam could help dropping the phone right then as she reached out to the flower and gently tugged the simple diamond ring that was wrapped around the slender stamen. She didn't even want to stop the tears as she slid it on her finger and collapsed down to the floor, finding the phone and tugging it to her ear to hear Danny's frantic and worried, "Sam's," from the other end.

She gave a teary laugh and he was suddenly silent, waiting, she knew, for her answer.

"I think," she said on a shaky breath, "That we need to find an 'of course I'll marry you' violet."


	39. Last Hope

94. Last Hope

**Andy's Tale, 6 (fini)**

No matter how Andy insisted Danny was his hero, it didn't help him get more sleep on the nights when Andy couldn't go to sleep, or woke up crying and wanting his mommy. It had happened often since that day in the park two weeks ago. Most times Andy would wake up crying in the wee hours of the morning, inconsolable and sobbing until he was either sick or just exhausted. And this Sunday morning was no different.

Andy woke up before three and Danny with him. It was after seven already and Andy was still going full force. He'd managed to cry himself into a restless sleep for a bit, but all it seemed to do was recharge his batteries. And it didn't help that Danny looked as frazzled as he felt, no matter that he was as gentle with Andy as he could be.

When the soft knock came from the door he could only stare at it, trying to decide whether it was damnation or salvation.

In the end he decided one of his neighbors had finally called in a complaint and settled Andy onto a corner of the couch while he answered it. There was a second knock, even more hesitant, making Danny furrow his brow as he flipped the deadbolt and swung the door open.

"Sam."

She gave him a small smile, looking tired herself, and Danny wasn't sure whether he should be happy she'd come. It didn't matter, he realized. He hadn't seen her since the day Andy had come months ago, and even knowing how much he loved her and had missed her… It was like finding he'd been living without breathing since she'd left.

For her part Sam only smiled, though she'd never seen Danny as tired and worn out as he looked when he opened the door for her. She could hear Andy in the background crying and sniffling, and for a moment she wanted to ask what happened. But Danny had always been able to read her, and he spoke before she could ask.

"He misses his mom. I can't be angry with him for missing his mom. It wouldn't be right." And then the softer, almost desperate admission, "I don't know what to do."

Without a word she slipped past him and straight for the crying child on the couch. It was instinct, she supposed as she scooped him up and cradled him close as she took his spot and began rocking him gently. Silently she wished for a rocking chair. Something big and comfy and fluffy that would cradle the both of them as she soothed the crying child. His blond hair was soft and silky, and she stroked it absently, eyes wandering up to find Danny's as he sank down on the other end of the couch.

It was almost as if Andy had only missed a mother's touch. Even Sam wasn't a mother, it was enough, and he hiccupped his way into sleep, real sleep, within minutes. He was exhausted and cried out,; Sam could only shake her head when he offered to take Andy and put him in his bed.

"No," she said softly as she pressed her cheek against the silky hair of his head. "Let him stay, I'm fine like this."

Danny nodded his head and looked away for a moment before coming back to her, eyes tired and questioning.

"You want to know why I'm here," she said easily, working hard not to betray her own fear and uncertainty.

He nodded again.

"Danny?" she whispered, and this time she didn't care if he heard how badly she wanted it. "I want my key back."

---

**Inspired from a drabble written by Me The Anon One. Chapter 6, **_**Keeping Secrets**_**, of her **_**100 Drabble Challenge**_**. With her permission I've taken the single drabble and made into something else.**


	40. Puzzle

98. Puzzle

It wasn't conceit that made Jasmine Fenton so sure of herself. Some people with her level of intelligence and instinctive understanding of psychology would have used it to… Well, to be like the A-List. Only better, because Jazz knew that she could manipulate people into adoring her. It would be fairly simple. She wasn't unattractive, and she fought very hard to make sure that all anyone ever saw was the know-it-all bookworm.

It seemed to be a family tradition, hiding what they really were. At least, it was for her and her brother. Their parents were hopeless when it came to subterfuge. Their father was, as much as she hated to agree with Vlad, a bumbling idiot who just happened to have the brain of a genius inside his towering hulk. And their mother was the epitome of an Amazon: able to kick serious ass without help, more than competent with an intelligence that rivaled and perhaps outdistanced her husband's, and yet she could still bake with the best of them.

As long as you didn't mind your cookies trying to take a bite out of you first.

But between her and Danny it was a fine art, sneaking and lying and pretending to be something they weren't. In fact, the only people who ever saw beneath the layers of lies were Danny's best friends, who were enigmas all on their own. But then, Jazz was never so sure that anyone ever really saw what she did in her brother.

She thought herself to be a master of deception, what with the keeping of Danny's secret and her own careful dance to never appear more than the interfering and annoying big sister. No one outside the family saw through it, and inside Danny was the only one. Tucker might still be as clueless as they called Danny, but she knew that Sam knew, and that the younger girl helped the masquerade along as much as she dared.

But Danny… He was better. Sometimes she thought it was only because she'd grown up with him and known him his entire life before the accident. He'd known Sam and Tucker for years, but Jazz doubted that they'd been able to see the glimmer of genius that lurked behind those sparkling blue eyes even when he was a toddler.

It was a spark that had never really found an outlet until Danny had changed, had become the Phantom, and had found that being a hero—as audacious as it sounded—was his calling.

Jazz had seen him fight hundreds of times now. Maybe even thousands, though she'd never bother to try and count them all. Some of them were easy. The Box Ghost, ectopusses, simple little creatures that really had simple obsessions. That was a trend Jazz had noticed the more she watched Danny fight for Amity. The ghosts with serious obsessions were far more powerful than those who were vague and inconsistent.

He'd gone up against the greatest spirits the Ghost Zone had to offer: the Fright Knight, Vlad Plasmius, Vortex, Pariah Dark. Even himself. And he'd won. She could remember when sometimes her heart would leap into her throat and Jazz would wonder if this would be the time that Danny wouldn't win, wouldn't make it out, wouldn't come home. If _this time_ would be the time that Jazz had to tell her parents the truth, and how their son had died a hero's death.

That had been when he was fourteen, a child and a beginner in his power, his battles. She'd seen the change sometime after he turned fifteen. It wasn't long after the Undergrowth problem; she'd seen Danny changing his usual tactics. He'd started using strategy. Except Jazz didn't think that Danny ever realized that he was.

He still rushed headlong into his fights, but somehow everything he did was the exact right thing to do at that given moment in the heat of battle. He was still hurt, but never as much as he'd been before. He still came close to losing, but not as often as back then.

It was almost like he could read the patterns of the fight before they were laid out.

She'd laughed the idea off at first, ignored at the second. But she couldn't ignore it forever, even if Jazz had never thought that the answer to her supposition would be in the shape of a little colorful cube. It was a regular rainy afternoon, she was stuck inside with Danny and Sam and Tucker as they goofed around in the living room. Their parents were down in the lab; the bangs and explosions were enough to guarantee they'd be busy for hours.

Tucker and Sam had dragged out board games and forced Danny to play until one of the boxes revealed a Rubix cube. They'd passed it around as Jazz tried to read her book. Tucker tried first and managed to line three colors on one side up. Then he gave up and passed it to Sam. She got a few more, and on two sides. Then interest was lost and they started a fierce game of checkers.

Jazz was the only one who saw Danny reach for the Rubix cube, eyes on the game of checkers and a smile on his face as he cheered Sam on as she took three of Tucker's pieces. And Jazz was the only one that noticed how Danny's hands, in distractingly absent fashion, lined up square after square of color until the cube has six sides of solid color.


	41. Precious Treasure

36. Precious Treasure

"How do you talk us into these things?" Tucker mumbled to Sam as he followed obediently behind her trying not to trip on the stilettos she'd insisted he wear.

"Come on, Tuck," she called over her shoulder in a cajoling tone of voice. "At least I'm not trying to paint a V on your forehead."

Tucker rolled his eyes. Sam had been talking about the show for ages; it was one of the biggest Halloween parties cum live show of the year, and she'd bought the tickets before they'd even gone on sale. The girl was a diehard fan of Rocky Horror Picture Show, even if Danny and Tucker didn't get into it exactly like she did.

Of course, for a brand new top of the line laptop, Tucker could get into anything as enthusiastically as Sam so long as it didn't involve avoiding meat. Danny didn't have any excuse, though. Tucker supposed that that was why he was dressed in drag while Danny paraded around in metallic gold underwear. Speedos Sam called them. Anything that left that little to the imagination was underwear to Tucker.

So Danny had gotten to go as Rocky and Tucker was supposed to be some bastardized version of Doctor Frankenfurter. He thought. Sam had gotten him squeezed into some silky under things that were mixed in with leather. There were straps everywhere that Tucker could think of, and a few that he couldn't, to go along with the black stilettos she'd forced onto him. She'd even gone and gothed him up again with eyeliner and whatnot.

He just preferred not to think about it too much. Or really at all.

Of course she could have gone all out with him because he'd complained and Danny had just agreed. Well, at least Tucker knew why that was. Why would Danny argue when, for the bargain price of displaying pretty much every smidgeon of his anatomy, he could see Sam decked out like the porn princess from hell? Tucker had to admit that if he said she'd gone all out with him, she'd gone even better with herself.

Her hair was spiked and wound about her head and her eyes were lined to the max. Her lips were painted Bloody Murder, and actual shade of lipstick—she'd proven it—and her nails were tipped in a matching shade. It coordinated nicely with the corset that was laced onto her slender frame. She'd gone with nothing but a pair of black silk and lace panties beneath that, and a garter belt that held up lacy black fishnets. Her heels were even higher than Tucker's, if that was possible, and she'd brought a whip along.

A prop, she said. It didn't stop her from threatening him with it when he'd tried to refuse the shoes.

Danny's eyes had fallen out when he'd seen her.

So here they were, in the middle of Chicago getting ready to head inside the theatre with hundreds of other maniacally dressed perverts, and Tucker was freezing off the choicer parts of his anatomy as Danny trailed behind Sam like… Well, like a well trained Rocky. If there was any justice in the world, Tucker mused silently, Sam would reward Danny for his willing submission to humiliation and torment. Of course, if she rewarded Danny Tucker was going to be out of a room since they'd all split a suite at the hotel.

He could deal. Besides, after six years, it was about damned time that Danny got to see Sam in lingerie. Never mind that half of Chicago got to see it, too.

But his thoughts held him up and Tucker knew he was lagging behind as he tried to squinch his toes inside the stilettos. "Never again," he muttered as he finally got the cramp in his foot to loosen up and started after his friends.

He made it two steps before he strode headlong into someone else, knocking Tucker back on his rear, pantyhose catching on the rough cement but, thankfully, not tearing. Sam would have killed him. As he climbed back to his feet Tucker started offering apologies just to have them shot back in his face by—Wait. What the hell?

Vlad? In drag?

"Oh, my god," Tucker wheezed on a laugh.

"What? Foley?" Vlad's face went a little pale as he realized that it was really Tucker, and Tucker still couldn't find his voice. "Not a word, you little twit."

Unfortunately for Vlad a picture says a thousand words, and Tucker Foley was rarely without some type of electronic device. He was still smirking as he pulled out his PDA (and he'd never tell Sam how he'd managed to get it tucked away in the little underwear—there were some things that were just too embarrassing) and snapped off a dozen or more pictures.

"Not bad, not bad," he murmured to himself, pleased as he scanned through them with a critical eye. He could easily tell that the man wearing the black lingerie was Vlad Masters. And there was no way Vlad was going to be able to squirm out of this one. Corset, thong, thigh highs and stilletto's?

And the truly scary thing was that Vlad actually seemed to _know_ how to walk in them.

Tucker's heart was much lighter as he stumbled his way into the theatre to find his best friends. After all, some things were just too good to not share. Even if it was only for a few hours.


	42. Gray

19. Gray

It was a miserable night; there was no other way Danny could even begin to think about it. The sky has turned color sometime before school let out, but they hadn't let go their rain until well after dusk. The rain itself was only wet, cold, thickly heavy as it fell casting a silver-gray sheen over everything that it touched, even Danny himself as he sank through the ceiling of Casper High with a tired sigh. The walls parted themselves before his lack of being and he found himself finally on the ground floor with an empty thermos as he glanced around to see if anyone was there before he reached through the red metal of the lockers to leave it.

"I never took you as a trouble maker," came a quiet voice from behind him, and Danny's fingers clutch convulsively at the thermos as he let it fall inside his locker with a clank.

He turned, already pale from his half death, more pale because of the fear of being caught out. "Returning something I borrowed," he managed to stammer out before Lancer took two silent steps forward and inspected him.

"Yes. I can see that," was all that was said for a moment. "Would you like to know what else I see, Phantom?"

Danny let his silence speak for him as he willed himself not to disappear into the bank of lockers. It would be so much easier to slip through them and out into the storm. Then he could avoid the accusations and reprimands his teacher had for his ghost half, much like most of the town. but the ingrained habit of compliance held him an unwilling prisoner.

"I see," Mr. Lancer began as he started walking towards the doors of Casper and the sheeting water behind, Danny following as much out of habit as curiosity. "A young man who is, regardless of the danger to himself and his compatriots, doing the good thing. The right thing. You've always had the potential to be so much more, Danny. It's a pleasant surprise to see it being fulfilled."

"Mr. Lancer?"

Lancer turned and smiled as he pointed to the doors. "Go home, Mr. Fenton. There are no ghosts here to plague you tonight."

---

"I had the creepiest conversation last night," Danny started as he dropped into his first period seat between Sam and Tucker. "It wasn't even a conversation. More like… I don't know. And the thing is—Guys? What's wrong?"

He'd been late, as usual; that wasn't anything new. But it meant he'd missed the morning announcements by more than ten minutes. Silence in the class wasn't unusual, but soft chatter as more common, and it was only when Danny noticed how still Sam and Tucker both were that he realized something was wrong. For a moment he panicked, wondering if Lancer had outed him, if there's been some breaking news he hadn't been aware of.

But that momentary panic passed as he realized he'd never have made it into school were that the case. It was only reinforced when Sam turned a tear streaked face to him and Danny reached out, instinctively, to rub at the tears and ask, "What happened?"

"It was on the announcements," Sam whispered as she closed her eyes. "Mr. Lancer had a heart attack."

If the floor had opened up and swallowed him, Danny wouldn't have been more shocked. He could only stare at Sam as he tried to process the information, failing miserably to reconcile it with the hale and hearty man he'd seen only hours before.

Tucker nodded. "The janitor found him when he came in this morning. He was at his desk." Tucker swallowed and pulled his glasses from his face as he rubbed at the bridge of his nose. "They said he died yesterday grading papers."


	43. Out Cold

84. Out Cold

**3 am, 2**

If there was one thing that anyone on Team Phantom was used to, it was sudden and surprising awakenings. Usually they were highly ghost related, only marginally less often they were nightmare related. Not even Tucker could escape the thoughts in the very back of his mind that one of them could very likely end up seriously hurt, or even dead. It never escaped any of the three's notice that Danny was the most likely candidate, but no one ever said anything. It was an unofficial unspoken thing.

The only thing that Sam found surprising about waking herself up at three this morning was the fact that there wasn't really a reason that she could find. Her alarm was off—it was a Saturday night and she had absolutely no intentions of joining her parents for Temple. She hadn't really gone in years, a down side of late night ghost fights. But it certainly wasn't anxiety about not attending that had her wide awake.

The window was closed, the curtains drawn so that there was only a sliver of light peeking through. Her blankets were secure and warm on top of her and Danny was sleeping across the foot of her bed. The house was quiet and—Danny was what?

Sam jerked upright as she realized that Danny was indeed passed out across the foot of her bed, and her heart leapt into her throat as she began looking him over anxiously, half expecting him to be unconscious from blood loss. And when she couldn't find a scratch on him and the reassuring rise and fall of his chest as he breathed left her Sam found herself blushing furiously.

Here he was, the boy she'd crushed on since grade school, asleep in nothing but his boxers, _in her bed_. Sure, he was on top of all the covers and all the way down at the bottom, but it still counted. He was in her bed, mostly naked, and asleep. Oh, thank god Tucker wasn't here for this or she'd never hear the end of it.

Sam bit her lip and reached out to shake him, trying o wake him up. He shifted slightly, grunting and murmuring, "A few more minutes, Sam. Don't wanna wake up yet."

"Danny," she said quietly as she crawled from inside her warm cocoon and down to kneel beside him, careful to keep her shirt pulled down. "Danny, you have to wake up now."

He moved again, rolling over and wrapping an arm around her lap as he nestled his head against her thigh. Sam was sure her face was red enough to be seen, even in the dark. "Go back to sleep, Sam. I just want to hold you for a little."

Her mouth dropped open, and Sam's eyes widened in surprised shock. Pleased, once the idea of what he was telling her sank in, but still shocked. This time she didn't even try to be gentle, she just shoved one finger into his side hard enough to bruise. This time he woke up and Sam gasped as she found herself tumbled back on the bed as bright blue-white light flashed and Danny Phantom floated menacingly awake.

Well, it would have been menacing if he hadn't been blinking sleep from his eyes.

"Sam?" he asked in confusion as he finally looked around and got his bearings. "What am I doing here?"

She gave him a wry smile as she hurried back beneath her blankets. "I could ask you the same thing."

"Uh…" The reply trailed off as Danny dropped back to the bed and rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. He gave her a shrug and a completely bemused look. "Would you believe me if I said that I have no idea?"


	44. Seeking Solace

5. Seeking Solace

**Inside, 1**

"You need to dress more appropriately, Samantha. Black is not a flattering color, especially for you, and those shoes you clomp around in are nothing short of a disgrace."

Sam only looked down at the floor as she stood in her doorway listening to the never ending list of complaints her mother threw at her. It had been ever so since she was fourteen—Sam's close association with Danny and Tucker hadn't started it, but it _had_ made it worse. Much worse, especially after Sam had gone to her first dance with Tucker.

It had been a wonderful night. Until she got home. It was the first time her mother had told her she wasn't pretty. The first time her mother had instructed her that she needed to dress differently, act and behave differently, become a different person to compensate for this fatal flaw. After, how dare she, a Manson, be less than attractive.

It had gotten worse over the years. Sam had refused to change. She liked who she was, she was comfortable with the person she had made herself. She had her own beliefs, morals and ethics. She had her own code of honor, as greatly shaped by Danny's secret as anything else in her life. But it was still hard to listen to every night without fail.

"How do you ever expect to get a boyfriend?" her mother asked her.

It wasn't even a question that Sam could answer. She was seventeen and she'd been on one date. One date with a boy who was completely fake, a boy that had reminded her forcibly of the boy she'd much rather have gone out with. One date that her mother didn't even know about and would probably die if ever she found out. Any boy who could accept Sam without the changes her mother demanded would never live up to what a Manson should desire.

"No boy is ever going to like you the way you are." Short clipped words, matter of fact and… not even cold. It was almost like her mother couldn't even care enough to throw more than disgust at her. "Trust me, Samantha, the only was a boy is ever going to look at you is if you make yourself into the perfect girlfriend."

A pregnant pause.

"Of course, I doubt you can even do that."

Sam bit her lip against the sudden burning behind her eyes, eyes still glued on the floor. But her hands trembled as she held them at her sides. As much as she wanted to say no, to tell her mother that she was wrong, there just wasn't any argument brewing inside her. She wasn't sure if she could even find one if she tried. Nothing her mother said wasn't true. It was clear as day that no boy was going to ask her out the way she was.

"Sometimes I wish you were more like that Sanchez girl. She's so lovely. Of course, you'll never have a face like hers."

It seemed to be the last insult of the evening. Her mother shook her head and turned, heels clicking against the floor as she walked away without even giving Sam a moment to argue. Or agree. Sam swallowed thickly as she stepped back into her room and closed the door quietly. The click of the lock was as loud as thunder, and Sam made her way backwards without looking to collapse on the bed when her knees gave out on contact.

The tears came then. Hot and harsh and furious as they burned their way down her cheeks. Worse than that was that the fury wasn't directed at her mother. No matter how hard Sam argued—she was right. No matter that she was an individual, that she was unique and that she was _Sam_, Sam had never managed to get the boy she loved to look at her as anything other than a friend that he sometimes remembered was a girl.

She buried her face in her hands, letting her hair fall around her face to hide it. She wasn't pretty in the first place, how much uglier would she be when she cried?

She barely felt it when the bed beside her dipped, but she couldn't miss the warm arms that wrapped around her tightly pulling her against a familiar t-shirt. She didn't even think to wonder how long he'd been there, or even to care for a moment that she was going to cry all over him and that he wouldn't miss how true her mother's words were when he saw her.

Instead she just buried her face against him and cried as he whispered, "Don't you dare listen to her, Sam. You're the most beautiful person I know."


	45. Mischief Managed

72. Mischief Managed

"Dammit. I can't believe I forgot." The curse was very quiet, but intense for all of its lack in volume.

She wasn't a forgetful person by nature, so Sam was understandably annoyed by her unaccustomed lack of memory. She found it quite easy to lay the blame firmly on the Box Ghost's shoulders. If it hadn't been for him and his sudden and completely inane desire to take over every takeout box in the Nasty Burger she would have remembered to buy the batteries she desperately needed.

With a frown she stared at the slim plastic cylinder in her hand, and then sighed. If Sam had been anyone else she might have started begging as she twisted the base of it. It gave a faint whir before it stuttered and died. She shook it and was surprised to get a more dedicated buzz, but the faint hope died along with what seemed to be the last remaining bit of power.

The base was twisted fully on, and there was nothing. Not a whir, not a buzz, not a damned thing to help her take the edge of her frustratingly demanding urges.

She gave it another hard shake, not really hoping this time. She wasn't disappointed. With a noise that could have been mistaken for a growl Sam whapped it with her hand willing it to work by sheer stubbornness as she wished she'd never bought the thing. She should never have taken Jazz's advice; taking care of her baser urges certainly kept her from jumping Danny on a daily basis, but this was the first time she had forgotten to buy new batteries.

It was driving her mad.

With an annoyed sigh she chucked the vibrator towards the end of the bed only to gasp and squeak when it stopped in midair before doing a slow twist. The air at the foot of her bed shimmered and she watched red faced as Danny came into being, a smug smile on his face as he waggled the green plastic at her. A smooth twist of his wrist and the base had detached to let the batteries bounce off of her bed and to the floor with dull thuds.

"So," he said, the grin only growing wider. "You need new batteries?"

There really was nothing she could say, so Sam only clutched her sheet to her chest as Danny watched her. Then the plastic fell as Danny shifted smoothly from Phantom to Fenton, and he quirked an eyebrow at her.

"May I offer my services?"


	46. Magic

62. Magic

If anyone had asked him what he would do after graduation, Albus Potter would have said that he didn't know. It was one of the reasons he found himself in the States and well into a semester at an American university the fall following his graduation to Hogwarts alumni. He'd never be able to say to anyone why, exactly, he'd chosen to leave. Let them think what they wanted; he feared no one who tried to rally to the Dark Lord's dead banner. But it was safer for everyone if he was gone.

Though, Albus had to admit, Amity Park wasn't exactly what he'd originally envisioned. He'd thought somewhere large, bustling, full of people who would be too preoccupied with their own loves to notice that there was something a little… off about the young man from England. Granted, he was glad he'd listened to the Headmistress when she'd told him that he should take himself to this small town—nearly a city—and make himself scarce. Professor McGonagall had always held a special place in his esteem for her deep fount of wisdom.

Well and so, Albus found himself wrinkling his nose at the heavy dust in the back of the stacks as he searched fruitlessly for a text he wanted to reference. The advent of computers in his life was a beautiful thing, but even with the smaller and even font his essays often rivaled his Aunt Hermione's in length. Of course, without the book on cellular mitosis within the confines of damaged nuclei Albus wasn't going to be rivaling anything.

But wait, what was that? Ah, yes, there. It was out of place, having been among the books missed when the university library moved from the Dewey decimal system to whatever was their technological imperative. Albus took a step, eyes flew open as his foot caught on something, and then he went down in a flurry of paper (not all of it his own) and two very pained cries.

"Oh, damn," said an annoyed voice as Albus rolled to his side, wincing as he adjusted his glasses across the bridge of his nose. "Couldn't you have tripped over me some other day?"

"I do beg your pardon," he managed to get out as he sat up seeing whom he'd tripped over for the first time. She was lovely enough to make him forget how to speak for a moment with dark hair that was as black as his own, but eyes that were a vivid shade of lilac instead of bottle green. "Are you—" Albus caught himself up short as his voice cracked, and he cleared his throat before asking her again. "Are you alright? I'm very sorry; wasn't paying attention to where I was stepping."

"My notes are everywhere," she mumbled as she crawled around gathering the stray pieces of paper. Without a second thought Al got himself on his own knees and followed suit, stopping only when he'd snagged the last paper he could see and worked them into some sort of semblance to a neat pile.

She smiled when he handed them to her.

"Thanks, it would've sucked to have to pick them up all by myself. You have Natural History with Begemon on Thursdays, don't you?" she asked as Albus gave her a bemused smile. "I remember you; the exchange student from London."

"Something like that," he managed to get out, ignoring the completely imaginary way his wand burned a line down the length of his thigh as he held a hand out to her. "Albus. Albus Potter."

She smiled again and took his hand, pumping it in a very American fashion. "Lily Fenton," she said with another enchanting smile as she pushed her hair back behind her ear.

"I've a sister named Lily," Al blurted out before he could stop himself. "You're nothing like her."

And with that one embarrassing sentence Albus' nerves were gone as Lily laughed again, cementing his first friendship since he'd left Hogwarts and home.

---

**Might as well just come out and say it; I do have more in mind for this little drabble. It'll be fun, especially since Albus was sorted into Slytherin and became best friends with little Scorpius Malfoy (who happens to prefer going by his middle name—Alexander) before someone tried resurrecting the Death Eaters. :D**


	47. Danger Ahead

56. Danger Ahead

In retrospect, Danny realized that if he'd been just a little more awake disaster might never have struck. But it was only six in the morning and he'd only crawled into his bed a half hour before, weary beyond understanding and biting back faint moans as he made his bruised body ache even more than it already had. But the damage was done not fifteen seconds after six o'clock that fine Sunday morning that Danny's mother barged into his room without so much as a by your leave and demanding answers.

"Danny, get up. Where have you been?" Maddie's voice was far louder than Danny could bear on thirty minutes of sleep, but she snatched the pillow out of his hands even as he tried to cover his head with it.

"I came to check on you this morning, Danny," she informed him angrily. "At four. And you weren't in your bed. In fact, young man, you weren't in the house at all. Where were you?"

He blinked once or twice before he finally gave up and closed his eyes altogether as he sat up, trying in vain to ignore the way they burned with lack of sleep. "I was at Sam's," he mumbled, nearly incoherent, and Danny had rubbed his face absently and nearly decided to lay back down before he realized what it was, exactly, that he'd said.

"You… were at Sam's."

In a heartbeat Danny's eyes snapped open and his entire body tensed. "Oh, shit," he breathed, and then winced as he realized his mother was still standing right next to his bed.

"Oh, shit is right, young man," she said ominously as she glared down on him, her eyes reminding him far too frighteningly much of Sam's when she was really angry with him. Like when he woke her up at three in the morning to help patch him back together.

"Danny, you have some explaining to do."


	48. Silence

15. Silence

He would have called it luck if Danny hadn't known exactly why the GiW weren't staking out Sam's house. It'd been at least two years, probably three since the last time they'd talked. Not much less since he'd last seen her on graduation day. He'd fucked that whole friendship up, but it had been for the best. Better to say goodbye and never see her again then to watch her get used over and over again against him. And yet here he was, crouched invisibly less than ten feet from her door as he glanced around, careful to keep the tiny figure next to him hidden from watching eyes.

It was the tiny figure that had him in this mess to begin with, the boy and the Guys in White. How they'd ever figured out who he was Danny would never know—the Reality Gauntlet should have ensured his safety. But the best he'd come up with was that they'd cloned him without knowing who they were cloning. That realization had only come very recently; it had sent Danny on a rampage through the government run lab until there was little left but unidentifiable debris and a smoking crater.

But they knew who he was, and he could never take the boy to his family, or even Tucker. Valerie was probably a worse option than the GiW; she still hated Danny Phantom with a passion. All he needed was for her to get her hands on a little clone of him. He snorted quietly—he had clones at the wazoo. First Danni, then Derrick. Next thing he knew there's be a Darcy or a Darrell or a Dana running around with the same DNA.

He'd been watching for an hour now, and Derrick was asleep where he sat on the ground curled against Danny's side. Without a second thought Danny let the invisibility drop and scooped the sleeping child up. He headed for the door with a resolute look on his face. It was a shame that it was so early; his Sam had never been a morning person and he wasn't sure if she would be too angry to help him or not. A tiny voice in his head raked him over the coals for that, and Danny did let that thought go with a sigh. Sam wasn't a bad person; she wouldn't endanger a child's life because she hated him.

But she'd sure as hell take her anger out on Danny.

He could live with that, had to because he was at the door and knocking firmly. The sound echoed through the house and he glanced around through the early dawn light to see if anyone else was awake and aware enough to notice the strange man knocking on their neighbor's door with a sleeping child in his arms. There was no one, but the thought quickly fled Danny's mind as he heard footsteps inside the house.

He knew that she hadn't even looked to see who it was, only opened the door in sleepy reflex. But the shock on her face when her lavender eyes lit on him woke her up like nothing else, and Danny blinked once to bite back the sudden desire to just touch her. He had more important things to worry about than a case of hormones that had never gone away; he had a sleeping child in his arms whose life depended on him, and now her.

"Hi," he said softly before she could do more than gape at him. "I know you said you never wanted to see me again, but I have a problem. A big problem, and I need your help."

Danny thought she might have refused him outright if Derrick hadn't shifted in his arms at that exact moment, blue eyes blinking sleepily up at him as Danny brushed some dark hair from the boy's face. "Are we there yet, Daddy?"

The surprise on Sam's face was perfectly clear, and Danny dropped his eyes from hers knowing that his last safe haven was gone now. The odds of getting her to listen to him try and explain were slim, and that didn't mean that Danny even had an explanation for Derrick's obvious belief that Danny was his father. It was true in a way, insofar as much that it was his DNA that had created the boy, and even Danni. But still, Derrick had never met Danny before he stormed the lab sixteen hours earlier.

He turned, shoulders slumping as he wondered how to explain to Derrick that they had to go somewhere else. And then he felt a hand on his elbow. Sam, always Sam, worried eyes looking up at him as she frowned and shook her head.

"Don't leave," she said quietly. "I'll help you, Danny. I've always helped you."


	49. Rainbow

18. Rainbow

"Will you just give it a rest, Tuck?" Danny sighed in frustration as he poked his straw around his milkshake.

Tucker rolled his eyes. "Come on, Danny. How long are you going to play this game? You know she's interested."

Danny's eyes darted up to Tucker for a moment and then back down to the thick pink shake in front of him. "She's not interested, Tuck. Just trust me, alright?"

"No, no I won't," Tucker insisted. "Every time you say that you wind up half dead or Sam and I get stuck cleaning up your messes while you fly away." Tucker swam one of his fries through ketchup before waving it at Danny, heedless of the way the ketchup splattered the table. "You tell me why you think she's not interested."

"Know. Not think, _know_."

"Fine, you know. Whatever. Just tell me," Tucker ordered as he bit into the fry, frowning at it as he realized that it had barely any ketchup.

Danny gave the shake another stir and that pushed it back with a resigned sigh. Without even looking at Tucker he dug into his pocket and pulled out a folded piece of newspaper, sliding it across and waited for Tucker to read it.

"So she protested," Tucker said with a shrug. "This _is_ Sam we're talking about here. She's always protesting about something."

"Come on, Tucker. I know you're not stupid, but you're being dense. It's all there in black and white. It all adds up."

Tucker only gave him a blank stare.

"You ever notice that all of the other goth people she hangs out with like each other? I mean, the girls like the girls and the guys like the guys. And then that," Danny said with a dismal sigh as he pointed at the headline. It screamed, in twenty point font, _Protesters Insist on Equal Rights for Homosexuals_.

"So?" Tucker asked, and then spluttered as he began to choke on another fry. "Oh. _Oh._ You think that Sam's… gay?" He started laughing hysterically. "You think that she likes chicks because everyone else like her is gay. Oh, god, that's priceless."

Danny's face heated and he knew his cheeks were turning red. "Well, wouldn't you? If the shoe fits and all."

Tucker snickered again. "Danny, Sam is an individual. If all the other goth kids are gay, do you think that _she_ is going to be gay?" He paused and pondered another fry intently. "Well?"

"I guess not," Danny admitted grudgingly. "But it's not like you choose to be gay or not."

"So this is why you've been avoiding her for months?" Tucker finally asked as he scanned the article, only glancing up to catch Danny nodding silently. "She's going to kill you."


	50. Memory

11. Memory

He'd never really given much thought to his future beyond diminished dreams of space and the iron will to stay, if not good, better than he might have been, once. He'd certainly never thought about what it might be like to wake up one day and realize that, if he wasn't his own worst enemy, he could certainly resemble him. It might have been easier to bear if it had happened… not overnight. But at least over time.

It wasn't that one night Danny went to sleep and suddenly woke up towering over his family and looking like he bench pressed cars. It was more like… Jazz leaving for a summer internship at a hospital in Virginia. Tucker attending a technology fellowship in New York. Sam being forced to go to Europe with her family.

The only three people in the world who could remember that darker half, even if he no longer existed, gone long enough that any changes they found when they came home would have happened seemingly in the blink of an eye.

Tucker had frozen in utter fear when Danny called his name in the airport. That had made Danny carefully to speak softly or not at all for three days. Jazz had nearly screamed when he'd come from behind to surprise her with a hug. He didn't offer to hug her anymore after that.

But Sam… The night that Sam came home Danny gave it no more thought than the desperate want to see her. He'd slipped through her wall and materialized three feet behind her as she fussed with her lipstick in her mirror. It was something that he'd never forget, the way her eyes went wide as she saw him behind her.

How she'd dropped the lipstick, turned where she stood, her mouth open as she tried to speak. And how she'd finally just slipped backwards, feet stumbling as she tried to move farther away, eyes frightened and mascara smearing as she whispered, "Please don't hurt me."


	51. Break Away

6. Break Away

Everything hurt him, no matter how he tried to move himself. He knew that he'd been burned where the ectoblast had hit him; the skin on his side, or what was left of it, was tight and raw and entirely too painful. The burning ache arced down his leg and up into his neck in time with his pulse. His head ached, from the impact with the wall he assumed. And Danny knew that he'd broken something in his arm. That, too, from hitting the wall he thought.

It made perfect sense with what he could remember.

Granted, that wasn't much if he were to count relevance to her current situation. He could clearly remember Vlad, and flying and fighting and taunting. And winning, which was hardly a first, but this win hadn't come at the cost of compromising his secret or nearly dying. No, that had come after when he was flying towards home. He remembered the screech of tires, and turning. But then everything was brightly blue and burning and screaming and the wall.

And now he was trussed up in the back of a van like a Thanksgiving turkey with no real idea of how he'd gotten there. The wheels had been humming steadily for a while since he woke up, but Danny didn't have a real idea of how long that was, or even how long he'd been out. The only difference he could tell was when they'd left a highway or interstate some time back. There'd been too many times for slowing down, stopping, turning, speeding back up.

But the hum beneath him was beginning to dull down again as the van stopped. Danny could feel the difference immediately; this wasn't a red light or stop sign or even a break to stretch legs. No, this time they turned the van off. He could hear the doors open and then the faint crunching of feet on what he thought was gravel, and Danny began to struggle again heedless of the pain.

He stopped cold as the rear doors opened and light flooded in, near blinding him as he blinked back tears from the light rapidly. "W-who are you?" he managed to get out before someone stepped into the light and blocked it from his face.

"Agent K, Danny Phantom. Or should I say, Danny Fenton?"

The white suit was immaculate, and the agent's head was as smooth as any of the other agents Danny had seen. He blinked again, fear clenching his heart and making his stomach go to ice. This… was one of the worst things that could happen. The only thing worse would be his parents finding out. If they knew he was…

"Please," he whispered, hating the plea even as it left his mouth. "Please don't tell my family."


	52. 67 Percent

70. 67 Percent

"I hate having to depend on Vlad for this," Sam muttered as she settled into the couch next to Danny.

Danny shrugged. "You know how I feel about it, Sam. But it's not like we have much of a choice in this. We can't just go to anyone. Besides," and now his tone was much cockier than solemn. "He's not so bad since he died."

Sam laughed softly and passed the envelope to him. "I can't read it, Danny. I'm scared," she admitted softly.

"Sam, honey, there's nothing to be afraid of," he whispered as he pulled her close, pressing a kiss to her temple. "You know that no matter what this says, we can handle it. You and me, we're a team. I'm not going to just leave you to this alone."

She nodded. "I know, Danny, I know. I just can't help it."

He kissed her again, this time softly at the corner of her mouth before lifting the envelope again. "No matter what, Sam." Paper tore as he worked a finger beneath the flap and opened it. He pulled out the single piece of neatly folded paper and opened it, eyes skimming the neatly typed letter and then the marginally messier hand written note at the end.

"Well?" Sam asked when her curiosity grew stronger than the fear.

"Sixty seven percent," Danny said softly. "There's a sixty seven percent chance that she'll inherit my powers."

"How do you baby proof a house when your child is half ghost?" she asked numbly before blinking at him. "Wait—she?"

Danny grinned at her and held the letter out, pointing at the careful script that belonged to Vlad. "Yeah. He thought we'd like to know that we're having a girl."


	53. Cat

23. Cat

It was demeaning, she thought as she combed the last of the white fur from her hair with a disgusted frown. Granted, most of the local populace was doing the very same thing, be it fur or feather or even in one unfortunate soul's case, porcupine spines. But somehow Jazz felt a great deal more slighted than even she would have expected after the first change had been made.

Another ghost, but this time it hadn't tried to kidnap people or attempt mind control or overshadow anyone. Instead it had somehow turned the entire town into… animals. It had been a novel thing at first; Jazz hadn't been affected until the last few dozen people were turned. She'd been able to enjoy (immensely in some instances) seeing the animals that the people she knew were most in tune with.

Danny had actually been the very first to go, with Tucker and Sam not far behind. Wolves, for two of them. Somehow it hadn't been surprising at all to see Danny and Sam turned into them. Both had been jet black barring a silvery blur on Danny's wolf pelt that, had it not been so shaggy, would have been the symbol that perpetually graced his ghostly apparition. Tucker had gone his own way in that, but there was no way that he'd been left behind.

Turned out that despite his yellow streak a mile wide, Tucker had the heart of a grizzly bear.

There were a lot of other surprises in the town. Dash had been a laughingstock as jackass. Everyone in Team Phantom had duly noted that it wasn't much of a strange—just longer ears and a tail. Paulina had become a shrew (which amused Sam and Jazz both to no end.) Star had morphed into a parrot. Lancer had been impressive; the man had a fierce streak buried within. But the lion's mane suited, even if it seemed terribly wrong.

Valerie as a jaguar was no surprise. Neither had it been unexpected when Maddie channeled her inner tiger. Jack had channeled his inner walrus. Jazz would never be able to look at the massive sea creatures the same way again. Forever and on she would always remember her father as a walrus fairly wallowing in fudge. There was nothing that would ever make that a good sight.

There had been exotic creatures, magnificent animals, things frightening and stupendous and completely insane. Which was why Jazz was so annoyed with the situation. She'd figured that she would follow in her mother's footsteps and slide her way into the feline family. And she had, just not in the way she'd wanted or expected.

Apparently Jazz was a housecat. It was so humiliating.


	54. No Time

24. No Time

"You know, for someone who hates getting up in the morning, you certainly do get up early," Danny observed as he trudged alongside Sam towards school. Tucker was on her other side, though he was still mostly asleep.

Sam shrugged. "What's your point, Danny?" she asked as she kicked at another pile of snow in her way. "It's not like I'm making you wake up extra early."

"I'm just saying," he replied. "What _do_ you do for an extra hour?"

"I just goof off in bed."

The reply was so without thought that none of three caught it for a moment. But the moment passed and within another Sam realized what she said, and that hers were the only feet still moving towards school. She stopped and turned back, her cheeks growing warm, even in the cold of the November air as she flushed a bright red.

"I don't suppose I can hope neither of you heard that?" she asked.

Both boys' mouths were hanging open, though Danny's disbelieving look was certainly more glazed than Tucker's. Tucker closed his mouth for a moment and then cracked a huge grin. "Sure, Sam. I can pretend I never heard it. But only if you give Danny here a detailed rundown of what goofing off entails."


	55. Can You Hear Me?

82. Can You Hear Me?

"Lancer sprung a pop quiz on us today. I'm pretty sure that Tucker failed it." Sam's voice was soft as she leaned back and rested her head against the grass, letting the narrow ledge of shade cover her face. She plucked a blade of grass as she smiled a little.

"He's been living on his computer since his birthday. I told you I got him that commando game he wanted so badly, right?" She chuckled. "He got it last Tuesday and I really don't think he's even paid attention to what we're feeding him. Seriously, Danny. I gave him a salad last night when I was over. A _salad_. And he ate it with no complaints."

The laughter was quiet and pleasant, blending in with the faint chirps of birds as she shared the joke. As it died away she sighed and rubbed her eyes.

"Anyway, I did alright on it. An A. I'm turning into your sister. Not that Jazz would appreciate that remark, but she's not here to hear it, now is she?" His silence was all the answer she needed, and Sam shifted on to her side.

"The ghosts aren't attacking so much anymore. You're doing, I assume," and she kept on over any response that might have been made. "I saw the Box Ghost yesterday, but he turned tail and ran when he noticed me. Funny thing was, he wasn't really doing anything wrong. Just kind of poking at some soggy boxes in a dumpster."

Sam bit her lip and sat up. "I have to go now. Mom'll worry if I come in late. Again. But I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

She didn't look as she climbed to her feet and brushed her skirt off. Her backpack was tugged casually onto her shoulder as Sam turned and started to walk away. She made it three steps before she stopped. She didn't look back to try and find the eyes that were boring holes into her back. She only stood there, stiff shouldered and tense.

"I'm not sure I can ever forgive you for this, Danny," she said. The words were almost too soft to hear. "I don't how to forgive you for this… for dying." Her lilting tone was angry and hurt beneath the attempt at levity. "I just can't."

She left then, too fast for anyone to think she wasn't upset, but not fast enough to miss the words trailing behind her.

"I know, Sam. I'm sorry."

But she never turned to look back. It didn't matter if she did; she knew she wouldn't see him. He'd never let her.


	56. Hold My Hand

35. Hold My Hand

For years he'd never thought he'd make it this far. He'd always assumed that one day he just wouldn't be there, that he'd fall in the fight with his friends. It was an astute assumption; he knew that if one of them went the other two wouldn't be far behind. But somewhere, somehow, it had all changed.

They'd gotten… better. Stronger. Smarter. They'd become competent warriors who could do battle in one moment and pass a test the next. It was still passing, if only just barely, but they had done it. They had fought, they had won.

They had lived.

He smiled happily as he breathed in deeply. He was surrounded by it, by life. The smell of freshly cut grass was sharp, and the sound of children were loud as they screamed and chased and ran away all around him. It was a good life, and he wouldn't have traded it for anything. Especially not this.

"Swing me, Daddy!" a small girl shouted form where she sat on the swing in front of him. Her green eyes were wide and bright as she looked back over her shoulder.

Tucker could only chuckle and push the swing again.

---

**For Nonny, cause she's cool like that.**


	57. Family

46. Family

A slip of memory, a single missed pill.

He'd left the decision up to her. "It's your choice, Sam. I won't try and make it for you." It was all he said to her when she told him, and the words had burned in her mind all night. She'd expected him hours ago, but Danny was never punctual even before his hours were dictated by the restless dead.

Sam had waited for him before, usually with a book or her laptop getting a hefty workout. Tonight was different; the room was dark and the only source of light was the faint glow of moon from her window as she waited. There would be no rest until he came for her, to hear what she would say. Even if she wasn't sure what she would say. But seventeen was so young…

"I know you're nocturnal, Sam, but this is a little much." His voice was soft and uncertain as it wafted towards her from where he stood at the foot of her bed.

Sam sat up with a start, one hand clutching her throat the other reaching for a thermos out of habit, the sarcastic remark that had sprung to her lips dying as she found his eyes. She swallowed and closed her eyes for a moment against the sudden burning in them. "I'm not ready, Danny. I'm not ready for this. We're too young."

Until that moment she hadn't known what she would say, only what she felt. Shame was bitter on her tongue but she didn't take the words back as she stared at him with frightened eyes. There was no mistaking the pain in his as he shifted slowly from ghost to human, jaw clenched and lips tight.

He nodded once, dropping to his knees in front of her. "I can make it go away, Sam." With the blink of an eye his arm was intangible to the elbow, and Sam shivered. "It won't be hard, I don't even think it'll hurt. All I have to…" He swallowed convulsively. "All I have to do is disturb it just a little. That'll be enough."

Sam pursed her lips before closing her eyes. "Do it," she whispered, steeling herself for the expected plunge of ice into her abdomen.

The tears were slipping down her face as she waited, head bowed, but it never came. She waited another heartbeat before opening her eyes and blinking furiously to see through dampened lashes. Danny was staring at her stomach, hand _right there_, ready to end the tiny life they'd begun. Her mouth opened before she could think, ready to scream for him to stop, not to do it, but before she could even inhale his hand fell, tangible again, and his eyes sought hers.

"I can't do it, Sam," he whispered as he laid his hand over her still flat stomach. "I just can't do it."

Without a thought she nodded, her nerves finally breaking as she leaned forward to wrap her arms around him and find herself enfolded in his. "I don't want you to," she murmured between gasping sobs. "I'm sorry, Danny, I'm so sorry."


	58. Keeping a Secret

53. Keeping a Secret

**Excerpted from **_**The Romanov Prophecy**_

Sam fingered her hair as she sat at her dresser, her desk chair rolled all the way over as she inspected the color. She'd seen roots the day before, her Grams had pointed it out to her when she was heading out the door on the way to school. This morning had been the first chance she'd had to fix it and cover the rich red-brown under the matte black dye. It didn't usually bother her; Sam was Goth right down to her heart.

But sometimes she wished that she didn't look like her great-grandmother so much.

Now there was nothing but flat black with no hint of any other color. She'd gone over her eyebrows while she was at it, no sense in doing the big fix just to let the secret out because of something little. She didn't have to worry about anything else because, well, it wasn't like she was sleeping with anyone. She was only seventeen and the only boy she'd even consider (willingly even) sleeping with was… Well, oblivious was the word that came to mind.

So the secret was kept, even if Sam didn't know why. The revolution had happened almost a century ago, there wasn't really any danger of someone retaliating on her or her family because they survived. In fact, the debate over her great-grandmother and great-uncle's deaths had been one of the more intriguing mysteries in the last decade. She knew it; she'd helped her Grams research it when they'd found the rest of the bodies.

Sam knew that Great-Grandma Ana wasn't buried there, or Great-Uncle Alexei either. Both of them were buried in the states, nowhere near the motherland. And yet Grams was still so cautious, even frightened.

Sam sighed and reached a hand out to an ancient music box that was hidden among dozens of others on the dresser. With a flick of her wrist it was open and a tiny figure that might once have been a ballerina was twirling about it as an old waltz played softly. She only closed her eyes as her fingers traced the engraved 'R' on the front of it.


	59. Vacation

21. Vacation

The sun was too bright as it cut through a slit in the curtains, and Danny rolled over with a groan. His head was pounding and he had a crick in his neck from the lack of pillow under head, but he did seem to still be alive. The last thing he could remember was Tucker and Valerie and Sam and… Oh. A very large bottle of some type of liquor. That would certainly explain why his tongue tasted like something had died on it. Ten years ago.

"Right," he said, perilously close to a whimper until he shifted a little to the left to get his eyes out of the direct line of sunlight.

"Get off me," an annoyed voice said from nearly beneath him, and Danny shot upright as he realized he wasn't alone in the bed.

_Oh god,_ he thought. _I didn't sleep with Valerie, did I? Or worse, someone I don't know… Sam's going to kill me when she finds out._

"Oh god," and this time it was out loud as the sheet moved, lifted and fell, and Danny was pinned by lovely lavender eyes just as bleary as his.

"Danny?"

He nodded, for the first time noticing that he had not a stitch of clothing on. Neither did she, and the porcelain pale skin that the falling sheet exposed only drive home the fact that he was in bed with his best friend, naked. And, Danny was never going to survive Sam's wrath once her brain kicked into gear and caught up with her, the clothes tossed around the room couldn't really be a signal that they'd just decided to strip and hop into bed for sleep.

"What are you doing in my room?" she asked, yawning as she rubbed her eyes. "And how much did we drink?"

His heart stuttered in his chest. "T-too much, I think," he whispered, one hand reaching out to take hers in his and stare at the plain golden ring on her third finger. "Way too much."

"What are you talking ab—" She stopped dead as she saw the ring on her finger, the matching ring on the hand holding hers, and her jaw dropped as she snatched her hand back. "I was married by Elvis," she breathed, and Danny wasn't sure if she was angry or hysterical.

But with that single sentence, the whole of last night began to come back to him in bits and pieces. Up to a point, he realized. He could vividly remember splitting from the rest of the group they'd come to Vegas with, a Spring Break trip with too many friends from college, and the four of them heading off to play slots instead of trying he tables with everyone else. And somehow running across one of those little drive through chapels with an Elvis impersonator… And dear god. _Did I actually ask her to marry me?_

He had to have, because he remembered the vows. Sort of. And he remembered Tucker and Valerie telling them not to get too much sleep. And he remembered… He remembered the elevator, and that was it. There was nothing after that, even if he knew something else had happened. The marks on Sam's shoulder were enough to tell him that, and maybe the stiffness in his back, too, because that felt way too much like dried blood flaking along his shoulder blade.

"Did we…" he started to ask, but the desperately angry look on her face shut him up.

"You don't remember?" she asked him as she pulled the sheet more tightly around her. He shook his head and she gave a strangled laugh. She buried her face in her hands. "This could only happen to us," she muttered against her hands. "We can have it annulled," she continued.

Danny bit his lip but didn't argue. It wasn't like they had been dating. Anyone much less each other, so marriage was definitely a bit out of order. Besides, if he could ask her to marry him he could surely ask her out now. Simple math, really, and he'd aced that as a freshman. Besides, she'd obviously said yes. The thought nearly made him feel smug until he recalled that they _were_ married, they _were_ in bed with each naked, and he really, _really_ couldn't remember what they'd done. He cursed.

"What?" she asked sharply, and Danny couldn't bring himself to meet her eyes.

"Can you at least tell me if it was any good?" His voice was whisper soft, but he had no doubt that she heard him.

She laughed again, this time less strangled and a bit more amused, and Danny looked up wondering why she was suddenly taking this all in stride. She reached a hand out to touch his cheek, her eyes surprisingly warm as she leaned closer to him and said, "Wouldn't you rather find out? It'd be better than asking, you know."

She was an understanding woman. He knew that she was, but this was a little much. He opened his mouth to say something—what he was going to say he had no idea, but it was something profound and brilliant and—nonexistent. And she laughed again, this time a little more amused than the last as she leaned closer, and closer, until her breath could mingle with his, her lips a scant breath away.

"Danny. I was sober when you asked me to marry you."


	60. Spiral

85. Spiral

"It's not like Sam to be late," Tucker said as he glanced at his watch again. "We're going to miss the movie if she's not here soon."

Danny only shrugged. "I offered to pick her up. She said she wanted to meet here."

They were sitting in the Fenton's living room as they waited. Tucker was sitting, Danny was pacing, his impatience beginning to get the better of him as the minutes ticked twenty past when Sam had promised to meet them. It was their Friday evening tradition, to meet after class and to head for the movies. A holdover, Danny thought, from when they would go nearly every Friday night while they were in high school. None of them could bear to let it stop and nearly two years after graduating they still held to it, no matter that Tucker had to drive in from the small technical college he'd been accepted to nearer to Chicago than to Amity.

Keys jingled in the lock and both started, eyes turning to the front door expecting Sam to let herself in. It wasn't, it was Jazz, and Danny let out a frustrated sigh as he saw her come in, hands drowning in bags as she fumbled to close the door.

"Little help here?" she asked—demanded more like it—and Danny and Tucker both went to help her, taking bags from her and piling them in the living room as she headed back out and back in for her backpack and laptop. "You guys could be a little more enthusiastic," she said with a roll of her eyes. "I'm home for the weekend; didn't you miss me?"

Danny gave her a smile. "Of course I missed you, Jazz. My life wouldn't be complete without your incessant nagging and psychobabble."

She scowled as she scanned her bags quickly and then turned to the answering machine. The red light was flashing and out of habit she tapped the play button, expecting that it was for her parents. But the voice that filled the room wasn't her father, and Danny and Tucker both crowded around her as the message played.

"I'm sure you're wondering why I'm leaving you this little clue, Daniel." Vlad's voice emerged from the small speaker, still managing to sound silken and suave despite the tinny quality that the machine gave every human voice. "It would be most courteous of me to tell you that I no longer need your services as heir and apprentice. "Smile, Little Badger, I've found a new heir that will be much more acceptable."

Neither his sister nor his friend missed the way Danny's face went ashen, his hands trembling as he leaned against the table holding the machine.

"Have no fear, I'll return the other when the time comes. Good-bye, Daniel."

The machine clicked, the tape inside whirred loudly into the silence as Jazz and Tucker glanced at each other, and then at Danny who's inexplicable fear was screaming at them through dull blue eyes. There was another click and a beep as the tape was reset, and then Danny let go of the table and stumbled back until his back was pressed against the wall behind them, and his face was buried in his hands.

"This is good news, right, Danny?" Tucker asked as Jazz moved forward to lay a hand on her brother's shoulder, concerned.

Danny shook the hand off and then shook his head wildly. "No. No, it's not good news. Vlad has Sam," he answered, frantic, his world suddenly spiraling out of control.

"Why would Vlad have Sam?" Jazz asked as the news that the girl had been taken sank in to Tucker.

"Because," Danny started. His voice cracked and he stopped, cleared his throat as he ran a wild hand through his hair. "Because Sam is pregnant."


	61. Horror

65. Horror

It was only instinct that kept him going.

Instinct and sheer determination, if not cast iron will to live, though Danny doubted it had anything to do with that as he slid through the air, altitude slipping away like the blood that was leaking from dozens of wounds across his body. The worst of them dotted red and green along his arms, up across his shoulders and down his back. Defensive wounds every one of them, taken when he'd curled into a ball to protect the places that needed it worst.

It didn't help—he'd swear that the spines had gone the entire way through him were it not for the lack of blood on the front of his hazmat. That, he hoped, was good, because there was plenty of that already. He lost more air as his strength failed and the lights blurred beneath him. Just in time; Sam's house was _right there_ and all he had to do was try and control the way he fell into it, through roof and attic and ceiling to land quietly in a crumpled heap on her floor.

He bit back a pained moan as he pulled himself to his knees, stumbling to her bed in a half crawl that left red and green streaks across her carpet. He didn't notice and if he had, Danny wouldn't have cared. He needed to wake her, he needed her help. Tucker was useless when it came to medical aid, the boy was so petrified of needles that he could barely look at them. Unfortunately, needles seemed to be normal for Danny at these hours, so to Sam he went.

But she looked so peaceful sleeping, and he was so very tired. His hand clutched at the dark purple of her bedspread, leaving it black where blood stained it darker. He could wait a moment—his head tilted and laid itself alongside his hand. Soft, so soft, and his eyes were so heavy.

_If I close them for just a moment, it won't hurt anything. Just for a second…_

---

Sam wasn't a morning person. Never had been, never would be, no matter how hard her mother and father tried to change that. She made it a habit never to wake up before the sun had risen at least halfway unless there was an emergency. Or school, though it was summer so she could forget about that horror for another month, at least. So when she woke, sat up blinking tired eyes against barely there sunlight, Sam was confused.

Her mother and father weren't tugging back curtains to wake her, nor were they summoning her to breakfast. Or another apocalypse inducing attempt at forcing any shade of pink into her wardrobe. There were no birds singing, there was no massive baseline pumping to wake her. There was nothing, simply silence.

Nothing to wake her, no one who needed help, only Danny passed out against her bed,and—wait.

Sam's eyes blinked again and a bit more sleep fled them as she looked at the sleeping boy. It wouldn't be the first morning she'd had to shake him awake and send him on his way before someone discovered him. They'd argued about it for years now, whose parents would take it worst. Hers would have a cow if they found him asleep in her room, anywhere at all even if he was on the floor. His might freak to find him gone and think a ghost had taken him.

Danny had suggested once that she come over and fall asleep against his bed so they could measure inverse reactions. Sam had declined with an amused smile as she wondered what the Fenton's would think. That Danny had finally acted on what they all knew. But she could be patient.

Sam was smiling that same amused smile as she reached a hand out to lay it on his shoulder and shake him gently. "Danny, you have to wake up. Time to go home."

He didn't budge, or ever make the expected faint snore that usually accompanied her first attempt and his first denial. She shook him again a little harder. "Danny—"

His name died on her lips as she lifted her hand to see it painted bright red, darkening from true crimson even as she rubbed her fingers together. Her heart stuttered as the blood tried to stick, thick and tacky, and Sam's eyes turned back to Danny against as she reached out and shook him harder. This time his head shifted on the bed, his hair falling from his eyes so that Sam could see them. The once bright blue eyes that sparkled with laughter were dull now, dark and empty and clouded.

She breathed in once, and then screamed.

---

**Happy Halloween!**


	62. Solitude

99. Solitude

It wasn't difficult for Danny to admit that there were very few things left in life that truly surprised him. Between being half ghost and turning himself into some sort of amateur superhero, there wasn't much left to faze him. True, the day that he'd gotten his acceptance to the University of Michigan in the mail had been a red letter day he hadn't expected, and when Sam and Tucker had confessed that they'd applied everywhere he had so the three of them could stick together he'd felt a brief moment of shock before love and gratitude overtook it.

Hell, he'd even paused a moment when Mr. Lancer had asked the biology teacher out on a date, but he'd certainly taken the time to be nauseous when the two had been caught making out in one of the stairwells.

However, when he dropped through the ceiling of his dorm room two years, three months and eleven says after starting college and miraculously managing to get Tucker as his roommate, Danny stopped dead in his tracks. Call it shock, call it surprise, hell! Call it anything, Danny could admit to it as he saw his best friend and roommate, apparently undressed, and in bed with someone.

Danny didn't even think twice once the initial shock had jolted through him and the inexplicable numbness had begun to wear off. He headed straight back up and, with a slightly hysterical laugh, turned to the right, counted the second star on the left, and flew straight on to Sam's house. Her shower was running as he slipped into her bedroom as quietly as he had the dorm room, but he barely paid it any mind, even the water shut off and, moments later, Sam stepped through the bathroom door in a billow of steamy air as she wrapped her towel around her.

She shrieked. He barely blinked.

"What are you doing here?" she managed to get out as she instinctively held the towel that much tighter around her. Perplexity hit Sam then as she realized that he really shouldn't be there. "Don't you have a late class tonight?"

Danny shook his head as he blinked. "Cancelled. Professor has appendicitis. So I went home," he added, his voice desperate and plaintiff.

"Oh," Sam said. "_Oh._"

"Oh?" Danny asked, eyes shifting to meet hers. "'Oh' would be dropping your food in your lap. 'Oh' would be toilet paper stuck to your shoe. This is not 'oh' material!"

She gave him a faint grin. "Well, sort of it is."

Danny grimaced a little. "You knew." She nodded and Danny shook his head. "I walked in on him, Sam. He's in bed with—"

"Dana," Sam inserted before Danny began assuming really wrong things.

"Dana?" The exclamation was halfway expected, and Sam hitched her towel up before crossing the room in her apartment to sit on her bed next to him.

"Dana," she confirmed. "His parent's were very forward thinking. His middle name is Ashley," she offered, "if it makes you feel any better."

"Actually, it only makes me wonder about his parents' generation."

---

**I really did know a guy named Dana Ashley. His parents wanted a girl badly, expected a girl, were **_**told**_** the baby would be a girl. Lo and behold, they got a boy, and dressed him in little girly clothes and named him a little girl set of names. And were they surprised when he grew up gay? Oddly enough, yes. :P However, Dana had excellent taste in boys and a very sharp sense of humor. I adored him.**


	63. Rejection

60. Rejection

**Stalking, 1**

If anyone had told Danny that it would take him three years to ask Sam out, he would have laughed at them. Not because he didn't believe it would take three years, but more because they actually believed he would ever get the courage up to take that all important step. And possibly destroy years of friendship and the strongest threesome outside of Harry Potter. Of course, he would have laughed if anyone had tried telling him any of the things that would happen by the time he was a senior in high school.

Well, maybe not at the growth spurt. It was hard to imagine Jack Fenton's son staying short forever. But decent grades? An almost truce with Vlad? Being popular? Not that he was on the A-List. Apparently there were still some things beyond belief. But he certainly wasn't a nerd anymore, or a geek or a loser or any of the things he had been teased for during freshman and sophomore years.

But, and sadly enough, if anyone had told him how badly he'd muck it up, he would have believed them. Even if it wasn't his fault. The day dawned sunny and annoyingly early, classes were long and inevitably boring. There were no ghostly interruptions, the cafeteria food was predictably bad, and he got detention. A day like any other, right down to the fact that Sam and Tucker both spent his entire detention doing homework in the courtyard to wait for him.

It was almost entirely according to plan, right down to Tucker taking a bathroom break the moment Danny emerged from the hallowed halls of Casper High to head straight for Sam, a smile plastered across his face and his eyes bright and happy simply because she smiled back.

"Boring?" she asked him as he reached out a hand to pull her up.

He nodded. "The usual," he answered as he held onto her hand, refusing to let go and even pulling her closer. So close; all he really had to do was bend his head down just a little. Her lips would be right under his and it would be so very easy to kiss her instead of taking up time by asking her.

But he waited; it was part of the plan to ask.

"Sam?" he said, his voice barely a whisper as she looked up at him. "Would you—"

"Bye, Danny! See you tomorrow!"

He blinked and pulled his head back, confusion making his eyes unsteady for a moment. "Oh, yeah, see you tomorrow, Michelle!"

And as he turned his attention back to Sam he had only a few seconds to see the hurt on her face before she pushed him back, wrenching her hand from his and dealing him a sharp kick to the shin with her steel toed boots. His eyes were watering as she grabbed up her backpack and darted off without looking back, and Danny was left to rub at the forming bruise and to dab at the blood welling from where skin had broken.

---

"I'm just saying that I think you're overreacting, Sam," Tucker told her as he spun in her desk chair. "He's a nice guy. I think he was just saying goodbye to her, not trying to hit on her in the same breath he was using to ask you out."

"Sure," she said, but he didn't hear belief in her voice. Just the thick sound of tears and hurt and anger. And another Kleenex being pulled from the box to wipe at the tears that didn't seem to stop.

"You'll have to sort it out, at least," he ordered her. "He'll try and ask you again. He's going to chase you down wherever you go because he wants you."

Sam leveled a glare at Tucker that would have killed him if looks really could. "That's called stalking in this state."


	64. Drive

9. Drive

"He did what?" She paused and rubbed the bridge of her nose. "No, no. I'll be there as quickly as I can." With barely a pause Sam turned and leaned out of her office. "Jimmy! I need a ride home; some yahoo tried to lift about half of what's under my car's hood."

And like that, Sam was on her way home.

---

She never was one who wanted to be paid back for anything she did, Danny mused as he hauled the tool box out of the back of his truck. He'd tried in hundreds of ways over the years, but somehow she'd always managed to catch on to every single way. At least until she got her first car, because if there was one thing most teenage boys were good at, it was fiddling around under hoods.

Danny was no different, barring the apparent gift he had. He always assumed it was because of his parents and their hundreds of different inventions, that let him see what was what and what it did and what needed fixing. But the natural aptitude had stood him the test of time and in the last ten years Danny had only needed to take his truck to an actual mechanic when he didn't have the equipment to fix whatever was wrong.

Sam, though, she always took hers to a mechanic. Danny had wondered too many times in high school if she was getting fleeced. She was a girl, and she was pretty, and she knew next to nothing about cars and how they worked. He'd tagged along once when they were in college and found out that his suspicions were right, but he'd never been able to tell her what he'd found.

It was worth his head if she realized he'd tagged along to try and 'protect' her. She'd've killed him the rest of the way.

So somewhere along the way he'd started doing all things mechanical for her car. She didn't know, of that he was sure, otherwise she wouldn't make it do damned convenient by car pooling and letting him in on her carpooling schedule. Like today, for instance; she'd called while he was getting ready to head out the door to tell him she'd be late to the weekly meeting of Team Phantom because it wasn't her day to drive and she was the last to be dropped off.

So damned convenient that he'd finished his day early and been able to head out before three. And now he was up to his elbows in grease and car parts changing the water pump on her car, which had been going to a while and he knew Sam was planning on taking it in for fixing soon. Within an hour the new pump was in, the old pump was lying on the asphalt next to his toolbox, and he was halfway through a tune-up. Another ten minutes and his head was popping up in surprise as first one, then another police car skidded up behind him and three officers jumped out demanding his hands up.

It was understandable that Danny only looked around to see who they were talking to. It was even more understandable that when he understood that it really was him they were ordering down onto the ground Danny's face paled and his heart nearly stopped. Somehow, it was only ironic that Sam had never mentioned to him that someone had been lifting bits and pieces of cars in her apartment complex over the last few months.

If he'd known, he might never have tried to pay her back.

If he wasn't so scared, it would have been embarrassing. Between the people lounging around on the balconies and in the stairwells of Sam's apartment complex watching the fireworks, and the handcuffs on his wrists as he sat on the curb, Danny was well and truly ready to sink into the ground and die. Of course, unlike most people, he actually could… but that was beside the point. The point was he actually tried explaining the whole mess to the officer questioning and, amidst the laughter, he was almost believed. _They were calling Sam._

He should never have asked her to help him find a birthday present for his mom. Then he wouldn't be in this mess and Sam wouldn't be on her way and—

"Can't you just take me to jail? If she finds out I've been under her hood all this time she's going to kill me!"


	65. Rated

40. Rated

"Dude, I'm going to have to kill you for this."

Tucker snickered. "You picked dare."

"I'm going to kill you, too, Tucker."

Another snicker. "You're just jealous because he's going to be flying around town and not into your bed."

"Tucker!"

---

"In breaking news, we have several eyewitness accounts of Danny Phantom's wild flight around Amity Park last night."

"I'm telling you, Lance, it was like nothing I've ever seen. Lucky thing I've got a video phone. It'll be posted online just as soon as I finish editing the close ups!"

---

Jazz watched the lump that was her brother as he pulled his sheet over his head for the umpteenth time since the first cry of horror. That had been very early in the morning, when he was getting dressed for school and Jazz had been putting the finishing touches on her Christmas wrapping. It'd been habit since he was fifteen to watch the news while he dressed, but somehow she was pretty sure he wished he hadn't today.

The horrified scream had brought mother, father and sister all running, and the cause had sent mother and father out to try and find the ghost responsible. Of them all Jazz had only waited until she was sure Danny would at least answer a question instead of threatening dire murder upon his best friend.

"So, want to tell me what happened?" she called in from the doorway.

"No."

"Can you at least tell me? Please? Because I'm tired of wondering," she told him with an arched eyebrow. "What? Did Sam boot you out of bed?"

There was a growl. "Not sleeping with Sam. Not even dating Sam. Go away."

Jazz snorted. "Then why the hell were you flying around town naked? Not that any of the female residents are complaining. And some male," she added thoughtfully.

There was another growl, and the sheet flipped back so that green eyes could glare. "I'm going to kill Tucker."


	66. Mirror

75. Mirror

**Inside, 2 (fini)**

Her life seemed like a movie. A satire, a farce, a Greek fucking tragedy, if she wanted to be truly maudlin about it. And all because she didn't meet her mother's expectations for a daughter. Her mother, truly her mother, even if she looked nothing like the woman, or her father. God forbid that Sam should point out the resemblance she bore to her grandmother—the shame of being related to such a rebel.

And the irony of it was that Sam really was related. To all of them. Of all the things her mother had ever done, she was sure that this was the one thing that hurt the most. A DNA test. She'd actually been forced to undergo a DNA test, to hear her mother as she informed the family doctor _why_ such an expensive and time consuming test was necessary.

"_Just look at her. She looks nothing like us; she has no manners and no breeding. You cannot honestly expect me to believe that she is my biological daughter. Surely she was switched at birth, and I want proof so that we can find a _real_ Manson and give Samantha back to whatever simpletons actually spawned her."_

But the test was done and the results were in. She was her mother's daughter, her father's too. There was no denying now, which only made it that much worse as Sam was forced to admit that the undying wish that someone else really was her mother, that she had a family who loved somewhere out there, was never going to come true. Knowing that Pamela Manson was right about everything else didn't help either, despite the fact that there wasn't some perfect little blond-haired blue-eyed princess wandering out in the world somewhere.

She looked into the mirror, eyes dark and analytical as she studied the face reflected at her. The body, too, because there was nothing her mother had not instructed her upon at one time or another. She hated the mirror, it only told her that her mother was telling the truth, took away in possibly comfort she might have had were she not truly aware of what, exactly, she looked like.

Her hair was dark and black, completely wrong for her pale skin. It made her look washed out, pale and wan. Her eyes were too large in her face, an odd shade of blue that was more purple than anything else. A sign of bad breeding, she'd been told often. Her nose was small and straight, but her jaw was too firm to be feminine or pretty. Clear skin, thank god she'd never been forced to suffer through that.

There were no curves beneath the black she wore. She was small and angular, too short to look more than half finished in her growing for all of her seventeen years. Her arms were too thin, stick like, and she could see the pale pattern of bluish veins beneath her skin. Her hands were nothing like her mother's soft and delicate ones. Too many ghost hunts, too many fights. Her nails were short and stubby, ragged where she chewed.

It was the same story everywhere else in her body. Too short, too sharp. Like a blade, a sword. Nothing like a girl, a woman. Nothing there that was beautiful, just pretty words from her best friend. Comforts from a boy who didn't love her, who didn't' care about her, not the same was she cared about him. Lies from someone who lusted after girls that her mother approved of.

Nothing but lies. If she truly were beautiful he would have said something years ago, and she wouldn't have had to watch him chase after anything with long hair and curves.

She drew a hand over her cheek, watching in the mirror and wishing for a moment that it was someone else's hand, even if that someone weren't Danny. Just someone who could care about her the way she wanted, needed. She looked down as the first tears welled up and slipped through her lashes, dashing at them angrily as she reached out for a tissue.

A shimmer caught her eye in the mirror as Danny came into being just behind her, and he dropped to his knees as he changed back to his human form, arms sliding around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder as steady blue eyes found her tear streaked ones in the mirror.

"You shouldn't cry, Sam. Not for this," he whispered to her.

She pulled forward, her arms trembling as she wrapped them around herself. "She's right," Sam murmured. "About all of it. God, the only date I've ever been on was with someone pretending to be someone they weren't."

He pulled her back to him, one hand holding her against him as the other drew itself across her cheek, pausing to turn her face towards him. His eyes moved from the mirrored image of her to the real things easily, a small smile gracing his face as he watched her.

"Sam," he said very quietly. Then he smiled gently and leaned forward to kiss her.


	67. Misfortune

13. Misfortune

**Malignant, 1**

She'd gotten sick towards Christmas time. It was easy to see how badly she felt when she barely had the strength to open the gifts he and Tucker had brought her for Hanukah. It wasn't the usual thing for Sam, she was rarely sick. In fact, in all of the years he had known her, Sam hadn't been sick more than a handful of times. Until Christmas. The cold she'd caught seemed to stay with her, and now it was March and she was still sick.

Danny hadn't seen her in weeks, and it was driving him insane.

It was almost like fate had been conspiring against him. Half the time she was too sick to see him, the other half she'd managed to get grounded. Even worse, inexplicably, whenever she got home the ghost shield he and Tucker had rigged around her house had gone up. If he didn't know better Danny would think that Sam was trying to avoid him, and Tucker, too. Except when she was in school she looked so damned happy to see him, them…

So he waited, and he planned. It wasn't that hard. Get up, get dressed, head for school and reassure Tucker by putting in an appearance. Tucker had been tired, something to do with a computer science lab, but Danny hadn't really been listening. He'd been watching the clock and waiting for Tucker to head for his first period so that Danny could disappear into the bathroom. And then disappear completely.

Sam's house had been real easy to case, since he'd been there so much since they'd turned fourteen. It was a weekend rite of passage for two years, taking over her basement theatre for movie after movie at least one night a weekend. Another thing that had changed come Christmas time.

The biggest problem was the ghost shield that was up. He could walk through it as himself, perfectly human. But that was about the only thing he could do with it up and running. They'd made the design so that no ghost could function while inside its radius, in the event that Vlad managed to get through it, should he ever try. The only downside was that Danny couldn't use his powers either.

So instead Danny took out the whole system altogether. It took him less than ten seconds to short out the entire streets electricity, something that he knew wouldn't last for long the backup transistors would kick in quickly enough that service would be barely disrupted—such was the lifestyle of the rich and pampered. But it was enough to take the shield offline and keep it off, since it had to be manually reset in order to be brought back into play. He'd have to talk to Tucker about fixing that when this was all over. Maybe install a backup generator just for it, or keep it separate from the neighborhood supply…

It was just as well that his thoughts were preoccupied when he made it through Sam's wall and landed lightly on her bedroom floor, because when he finally got a look at her he couldn't think at all. She was asleep, which wasn't unusual, but despite the warmer weather she was still buried under blanket after blanket. And still she looked cold. Her hair looked brittle, and her face was too pale. Shadows under her eyes as dark as bruises and so much thinner, so much more frail than she should have been.

The guilt that ate at him was merciless. The shield hadn't been up to keep them from her, but to protect them from whatever she had.

Then she moved beneath the blankets and Danny's instincts took over and drove him to invisibility as she lurched upright in a motion that looked so painful. The blankets were pushed back, thrown in fact, and her feet hit the floor unsteadily as she swayed and then headed for her bathroom as quickly as she could in her weak state. Danny followed, grimacing as he heard the telltale sounds of vomiting.

It was instinct again that drove him to kneel beside her, one hand holding her hair as the other stroked her heaving back until it and she were still. The empty cup at the sink was easily reached and filled with water so that she could rinse her mouth even as she reached to flush the toilet. Her hair was still tangled around his fingers as he held her, looked at her.

"Do you need me to get your mom, call your doctor?" he asked, his voice unwontedly soft. She shook her head and he tried again. "Medicine then? I could go get what you need. It might help."

He didn't miss the pained look in her eyes as she sat quietly, her head practically resting against his hand as he began unwinding her hair from him. He flexed a finger and a few strands slipped off, still silky smooth despite whatever was ailing her. He flexed his hand again, and could only watch mutely as several chunks slipped off.

Of her scalp.

"Sam?" he asked, and she only looked at him tiredly. Then there was a knock at her bedroom door before it swung quietly inward, and Danny went invisible and intangible in the same breath as Sam's mother walked in.

"Sam, honey? It's time for your chemo."


	68. Safety First

97. Safety First

Sam had always prided herself on being prepared. Her parents sometimes called her paranoid, an insult that Sam had to let past without argument more times than she cared to count because, to anyone but Team Phantom, it would look like the truth. In reality, anyone who knew her would see that she was just extraordinarily well prepared when it came to ghosts and the like, not to mention the more mundane crimes of humans. For her, it was just a fact of life.

So, when on the day she moved out on her own, it hadn't bothered her terribly that Danny and Tucker had gone about her new apartment methodically hiding tiny cans of mace. In case she should need them, they said, and Sam had just gone along with it thinking that it was sweet (in an overprotective way, of course.)

She'd never really expected to use them, she'd always assumed the most real and dangerous threats would come from things that were already dead.

It took two years for her to eat that assumption. Two years, a Friday night, a clock that read well after midnight, and a craving for a piece of the chocolate cake in her fridge so that she was walking through her kitchen just as a shadow fell across the window from her patio, she found it in her heart to forgive Danny and Tucker their overprotective streaks that were frequently embarrassing as she tugged a bowl from the top of her fridge to dump out a small can of the mace that had been hidden there.

It was just bad luck for her intruder that Sam had never lacked courage along with her sense of preparedness. It had been pointed out to her on several occasions that she seemed to be missing a healthy dose of fear, especially when it came to Tucker and Danny. Which was why she swung the back door wide open, laid aim at said shadow, and let loose a spray of vile and burning liquid straight into her intruder's face.

She took a moment to smile at the cries of pain, such sweet music to her ears. She had to enjoy it for a moment before she called the police and maybe kicked the guy a few times. She'd have to go inside and get her boots first if she was going to do that of course, and her thoughts were suddenly stalled as it dawned on her that she'd heard these particular cries of pain before.

Without a second thought the can was clattering against the stone of the patio and Sam was dropping to her knees beside Danny as she dabbed at his face with a sleeve, he lip between her teeth as she worried at it. "Oh my god, Danny, I'm so sorry," she exclaimed, searching for something else to help stem the tears of pain once her sleeves were ruined.

"'S alright," he managed, and he shook his head as tears streaked down his cheeks. "Don't rub, 'kay?"

She stopped immediately before reaching for a watering can she'd left half full just that afternoon. "What are you doing here?!" she demanded as she upended it over his eyes amidst his splutters of protest.

He wheezed at her, pushing the watering can away and poking at his eyes as he tried to look at her. "Was trying to ask you out. Next time I try can you just kill me instead?"


	69. Insanity

12. Insanity

He was little more than a child, she knew. Fifteen years and only a few months, but the empty and soulless stare from his eyes was far, far older than she had expected when she'd asked to be allowed in with him. They were a dead blue and barely focused on her where she knelt in front of him, clipboard in hand and pen held loosely in her hands. Such a promising subject broken so quickly.

She spared a cursed though for the incompetents who were responsible for his state. The early days of his capture had been held in an abandoned warehouse that was modified into a holding facility, something that the G.I.W. didn't understand so well as her branch of research. Ectoplasmic beings were very resonant to the emotions around them, and even if the child was only half ghost, being torn away from his human life had been traumatic.

They were nothing but tank amateurs who likened themselves true scientists because of a minor research grant given before the true reality of paranormal research was realized.

"Danny?" she asked softly, watching for a sign that he heard her, a flicker of his eyes, a twitch to his mouth. Anything that would tell her he wasn't broken beyond repair, else they would be out the only known human-ghost hybrid in existence.

There was nothing, and she reached out and touched his shoulder gently. His head swung about and lifeless eyes zeroed in on her with barely any focus. "Danny?" she tried again. "They tell me you've not been cooperating with the tests. They only want to see what you're capable of."

He said nothing, didn't even shift so much as a muscle where he leaned against the wall.

"If you'd help us, Danny," she continued on in a soft, dulcet voice, "then we could reward you. A movie, perhaps? A video game? Perhaps even a phone call to your friends and family?"

This time the eyes flickered and the blue seemed to brighten for a moment. He was focusing, directly on her, and it send a thrill of fear and anticipation down her spine. She was lying, she knew that she was. The movie, the game—those were possibilities. But never a phone call home to a family that had no idea where their son had disappeared to. For the rest of the world Daniel Fenton was a runaway, presumed dead, or at least lost to them forever.

To the people inside of Section 9 he was the single most important discovery in the short history of paranormal research, and possibly in modern biology.

"Call them?" he asked, and she nearly started back. They were the first words he'd spoken since being brought in months prior, and his voice was harsh and strained with disuse. "If I show you what I can do, you'll let me call them?"

She nodded, a smile pasted across her face to try and hide the smugness beneath. Where their brutal methods had failed she had gotten him to the point where cooperation was inevitable. A heartbeat later she was staring down at her pen, a slender black pen that was now protruding from her white lab coat. A great red stain was welling up around even as she lifted the hand it had been in moments before to touch it. Blood, she realized as she pulled her fingers away and stared at the crimson liquid on them.

The last thing she saw as she collapsed to the floor was his eyes. No longer dead, but alive and eager and glinting with malice as his face curved into a mockery of a smile.

"I showed you. Now let me call them."


	70. Mother Nature

22. Mother Nature

"Mr. Lancer, can I have a pass?" Danny asked after an annoyed sigh. He'd only made it back to class ten minutes before—the Box Ghost had picked a hell of a time to start going through the records in the storage room. It had taken him longer than usual to catch the annoying blue ghost without damaging all of the paperwork.

His teacher raised an eyebrow as he leaned back in his chair, the book he'd been reading from forgotten for a moment in the interruption. "Didn't you just have a pass, Mr. Fenton?"

"Yeah," Danny said, eyes darting to the silver suited ghost that was still at high altitude just outside the window. "I have to go again."

The look Lancer gave him was not a promising one, and Danny fought down the urge to blush. "Small bladder," he offered into the silence, knowing that everyone heard his excuse.

"I can hardly believe it's that small," Lancer responded sardonically. "Considering how long you were just gone…"

Skulker was roaring ever closer, and Danny gave up any attempts at dignity as he realized that if he did _not_ get out of the classroom quickly, the hunter would plow into it and quite possibly force him into giving up his secret to save everyone else. "Please, Mr. Lancer?" Danny asked, his voice a little desperate now.

Lancer gave Danny a look and an annoyed sigh. "Very well, Mr. Fenton."

Three seconds later Danny was out the door, pass in hand, and leaning against a bank of lockers as he glanced around before shifting to ghost. He gave a sarcastic chuckle before lifting into the air.

"And they wonder why I have no social life."


	71. Do Not Disturb

63. Do Not Disturb

**Excerpted from **_**Be Careful What You Wish For**_

He let the phone ring for nearly ten minutes with his head buried beneath his pillow. It was Sam's phone, she needed to wake up and answer it. He told himself that at the first ring as he pulled said pillow over his head; it was enough to let him drift back into a light sleep. At least until it rang again. This time he grumbled and layered his arm over the pillow before trying to force his body back into slumber.

Then it ran again. And again. And again. And Danny couldn't simply ignore it as he tried to sleep.

"Sam, answer your phone," he grumbled. The phone stopped ringing. All was well in his world until it rang again, and the last few days flooded back into his mind in the seconds Danny tried to give to a curse for the annoying device.

"Oh, fuck," he breathed as he sat up and glanced down. No, he was still screwed. The room he was sleeping in wasn't blue, it was purple. The clothes he was wearing definitely weren't his, and what was underneath—he whimpered.

The ringing continued and this time Danny reached out with an unfamiliar delicate arm to fumble with it before flipping it open to see his own number reflected at him. He hit a button and brought it to his ear, heart still racing.

"Why can't this be a bad dream?" he asked Sam before she could begin to yell at him for not answering on the first ring.

"I don't know," she answered, and her voice was shaky and nothing close to the yelling he expected. She sounded too desperate with those three words. "Danny, I need help."

He sat up a little straighter. "Ghost?" he asked, all senses heightened as he wondered if she was going to have a major ghost fight while they were in the wrong bodies. Oh, he didn't want that to happen. He couldn't stand the thought of her getting hurt, even if it was his body that would be on the receiving end.

"No," she whispered, her voice barely controlled. "It's worse."

He arched an eyebrow, the unfamiliar but instinctual sarcasm that Sam had coming through for a moment. "What's worse than a ghost? Did my parents find out? about… well, any of it?"

He could almost hear her shaking her—his—head. "Oh, it's much worse, Danny. I was asleep, and I was having a dream. And now I have a… Uh, a problem."

"Okay?"

Sam breathed out into the phone and he could hear the exasperation in it. "A problem, Danny. Come on, don't make me say it," she said desperately. "And it's really uncomfortable, and I need it to go away. It's bad enough having to take a shower in your body. I don't want to deal with _this_ too!"

Oh. That kind of problem. He couldn't help it as he flushed bright red and buried his face against his arm with the cell phone still tight to his ear. "Oh. Yeah, that problem. Sorry, Sam. I'm a guy, and I'm a teenager. It sort of goes with the territory. And what were you dreaming about?"

The last was a genuine question, because he wasn't even sure what would be going on in his body given the situation they were in. Sam liked guys, but Danny didn't. It was definitely worth wondering if the laws of attraction were truly governed by the psyche rather than the bodies instinctual responses. But given the circumstances, he realized a little too late that he should never have asked her that particular question.

"That is none of your damned business, Daniel Fenton. I can't believe you'd ask me that," she shrilled into the phone in a way that made him cringe. He was a guy. He was past puberty. His voice should _never_ be that shrill. It changed in a heartbeat to a soft but desperate wail. "How do I make it go away?"

Oh, she was going to kill him. Unless he died of mortification first.

"Oh, god," he muttered. "You'll, um, have to take care of it, Sam. Yourself."

There was a thump from the other end of the line, and Danny wondered if she'd fainted from the whispered instruction, or if she'd merely dropped the phone. Not for the first time did Danny wish he'd never made the wish in the first place.


	72. Two Roads

44. Two Roads

**Choice, 1**

Blue eyes were glued to the time portal in front of him as Danny studied the images that raced across it. In one half he was there, Phantom and fighting—as always. In the other half, he was Fenton. Just Danny Fenton, and with Sam. _Oh_, with Sam. He'd give up almost anything for her, just to have the chance to be with her. And the question still remained.

"If this is what you're telling me, Clockwork, then isn't the answer simple?" he asked the aging Time Master without moving his eyes. "Give up my powers and I have Sam, keep them and she remains nothing more than a friend."

"I at least owe it to you, Daniel, to apprise you of the options," Clockwork said as his form shifted to infantile. "You've fought hard these last five years, and no one will begrudge you your chance to lay down the fight."

Danny pursed his lips, his arms crossed casually in front of his chest as he watched again. No one who mattered had ever told him that he wasn't intelligent, and Danny had bent that fierce intelligence hard against the battles he always seemed to face. They were fewer and farther between now that he had so many ghosts defeated, but they were still there and he still fought. If any of the people who knew him well, Jazz, Sam and Tucker, even Mr. Lancer who always could see past the masks he wore in high school, they'd know that he was thinking now, no matter that he looked like he was simply enthralled at the thought of letting go, of being with Sam, of forgetting about the ghosts.

"At what price?" he finally said into the still silence. "Phantom matters, he makes a difference. What's the price for letting my ghost half die?"

The very air around Clockwork seemed to thicken as he turned red eyes on the younger ghost. "Phantom has saved countless lives, touched humanity farther than that. If the ghost remains, he will continue to do so."

"How many?" Danny bit out.

Clockwork considered Danny and the way his eyes were beginning to bleed to green. It was a sign he knew easily, that younger ghost's emotions were rising very close to the surface. "You want me to place a number on the price of your freedom?"

Danny shook his head. "No. The number is academic. You already know what I'll choose." He lifted his hand to let it slip through the time stream, an attempt to touch the girl he wanted to badly and now would never have. "She'd never forgive me if I made any other choice."


	73. Heaven

7. Heaven

When it happened, it happened in a most splendid fashion.

When it happened, hundreds of people were there to witness it, to witness the way that he fought, that he saved lives, tried and failed with others. The entire city could watch and cheer or jeer him as he fought, echoing in Danny's ears. Sam and Tucker had been lost long ago to the crowds that gathered, not able to keep pace with the frenetic flight paths Danny took as he alternately chased and fled his opponent. Not Vlad, nor the Fright Knight, or even Skulker, but some other ghost equally powerful and just as deceptive.

When it happened, Danny had been fighting for an hour and more, and even his higher than average stamina was coming to an end. Every trick, every tool, every talent that had come to him in four years worth of fighting were rebuffed, thrown back at him. He was at the end of his rope when the blow came, the blow that drove him down a hundred feet and into the concrete below him. If he noticed that the cracking ran out in dizzying streaks by a dozen feet Danny didn't show it, only shot back into the air, his ghost form reappearing only when he was ten feet off the ground.

When it happened, when Danny's secret finally wasn't a secret anymore, he was bloody, very nearly broken, and terrified for his very life when he finally landed somewhere near a tree, close enough to lean against it as his body trembled with pain and exhaustion. Wide green eyes, not blue, never blue, stared at the gathered crowd and half of his mind asked himself why these people would gather at a ghost fight, were they asking to be hurt, maimed, killed? and the other half was screaming against those sane thoughts, fear creating unthinkingly raw furrows across his heart at the silence, the fear that met him.

When it happened, Danny disappeared.

When it happened, Danny chose flight over fight. He'd already fought so hard, and the censure that he, that Sam and Tucker, that they all expected, wasn't something he could face. Not now, maybe not ever. But he already had a plan, he already knew what he would do. No matter how tired he was he still had the strength for a staggering flight to his house and into his room. There, between the plaster and drywall of his room and the next, was a bag that he'd put away just for this day. He wasn't arrogant enough to think that he could keep the secret forever, but neither was he stupid enough to think that everything would be okay when finally it was revealed.

When it happened Danny collected a bag of clothes, and three years worth of savings from the odd jobs he could do. He didn't even take the time to change his clothes before taking it, and grabbing up his laptop in its bag and heading right back out through the wall, barely ahead of the slamming doors downstairs and his parents demanding cries for him. Oh, no, he was no fool to answer them.

When it happened, Tucker wasn't home yet, either at Sam's or on his way to Danny's, and so Danny left a note. And when it happened, Tucker wasn't at Sam's either, which left Danny to face her with his decision. Alone.

When it happened he found her in her room, sitting, waiting patiently on the end of her bed, a black duffel much like his own next to her feet. The surprise, the shock, nearly stole his voice from him. "I can't ask you to go with me," he told her softly, sincerely, willing her to understand that he couldn't, wouldn't ask her to rip herself away from her family, from her other friends, from everything that she knew besides him.

When it happened, she stood, her eyes clear and her voice steady as she answered. "You don't have to ask, Danny, I'm going with you.," and she stooped to lift her bag, face hidden for a moment. "But I wish you would."

When it happened, he stepped closer and wrapped his fingers around hers, easing the bag from her grip so that she held to nothing but him, and whispered, "Sam, will you come with me?" only a moment before he kissed her.

When it happened, it happened in a most splendid fashion.

---

**Right, should this make no sense I totally blame it on POTC3. When Eyeball (no, I don't know his name) freed Calypso, I swear to god that the way he spoke to her was the most sensual thing I've ever heard. And it made me write this. So be thankful for that one scene, and that is totally how Danny was asking Sam. :D**


	74. Fortitude

20. Fortitude

**Malignant, 2 (fini)**

When he disappeared she couldn't decide what hurt worse; her heart or her body. Her body only won out simply because she was so tired, and it had been so very long since she felt good. Hell, since she felt anything but the aching that seemed to pervade it, the nausea and sickness that coincided with the chemotherapy. Months, at least; she was beginning to forget what it felt like to be healthy, to feel anything but her body dying one cell at a time. And now Danny knew, one of only two people in the world that she'd tried so hard to hide her illness from.

Most everyone else that knew her knew. The school, teachers, even Danny and Tucker's parents. The former because her parents had tried to blame them, the latter because she called to ask them not to help Tucker trying to find a way to see her. They'd taken it badly, but the Fenton's had taken it worse.

It had long been wishful thinking that they could be her parents and not hers, but apparently they did think of her as family. The Fenton's were distraught, even after discovering a genetic anomaly that was passed down mother to daughter. It was only bad luck that her father had had the genetic code that made it cancer, and no one was to blame really.

But for Danny to just disappear the way he had, the look on his face all she had left to see—oh, that hurt, and Sam didn't answer when her mother called to her again. She was still leaning against the toilet when her mother checked the bathroom, eyes closed so that she wouldn't have to see the hank of hair that had phased from Danny's hand in the moment he had left her alone.

_Oh god, if Danny had left what would Tucker think?_

"Oh, Sam," her mother murmured as she found her daughter.

Propriety had long since been forgotten, and Pamela dropped to her knees, arms encircling Sam to help lift the limp girl up. Her face was pallid and as her head brushed her mother's shoulder another handful of hairs let loose, clinging to the pale knit. Pamela stifled a wince and bit back the urge to cry, just as she had so many times since Sam had been diagnosed. It was hard, to watch her daughter seeming to wither away a little bit at a time, harder still to know that there was nothing she could do about it.

Transplants weren't the answer, there was nothing to replace, and Sam simply wasn't strong enough to have the necessary surgery. Their only real hope was to force the cancer into slowing and making her strong enough, a feat all in its own while she was in the middle of chemotherapy. Radiation would follow, the surgery was already scheduled for the week after her last appointment. They could only hope.

"Alright, Sam," Pamela murmured as she laid her daughter out on the bed and fetched the jacket that Sam would need against the cold. She was already dressed, thank heaven she'd gotten Jeremy to help them through that ordeal before he'd had to head to the office.

She knew how badly he'd wanted to go, he hadn't missed a doctor's appointment yet, but the merger was necessary and it needed his delicate touch behind the reins of the business. For all that they played at being spoiled socialites, they'd helped make the family business what it was today: not just toothpicks for deli sandwiches.

She slid an arm around Sam's waist and helped her stand, the thin and transparent feeling of the way Sam leaned on her making her close her eyes for a moment. "Just down the stairs and to the car, Sam," she said softly.

It was painful, and it was exhausting for both of them, but the stairs were negotiated with careful habit. No chances that Sam might take another bruise; there were already so many marks on her. Jared was already at the door, hand on the knob to open it as they came closer, and Pamela gave him a grateful smile. He'd offered to help so much more than were his duties, but this was her place, a mother's place, to help her child.

Pamela let go of Sam with one arm and scooped up her purse as Sam shivered against the cold that already radiated from the door. She knew that her sudden sensitivity to it was because she was so sick. She'd been thin before, always since she was a child, but it deemed like all she had against the cold was skin now, and the cold made her bones ache more than the sickness did.

"Mom," she breathed out, feeling lightheaded as Pamela wrapped two arms around her, her legs suddenly feeling like jelly.

Then Jared opened the door and Sam closed her eyes against the expected sunlight. She'd forgotten to ask her mom to grab her sunglasses—she'd remember next time. The sun was just so bright. Except that it wasn't—a shadow was across her face and her mother was suddenly still at her side. Sam opened her eyes, wondering.

It was Danny, waiting on the front stoop, eyes dark and worried and—Sad? Afraid? God, any of the myriad emotions she'd been through in the last months.

He broke the silence, hand out and taking a step forward to touch her shoulder, to wrap an arm around her and help support her just as her mother did.

"I'll go with you, if you'll let me."


	75. Dreams

39. Dreams

**3 am, 3**

It was very late, or very early, Danny decided as he trudged down the stairs and headed for the kitchen. It was cold enough outside that hot cocoa wasn't a strange thing to want, even if he was just trying recreate the sense of security he'd gotten from it as a child. If this didn't work, he didn't know what would, and if he couldn't find something that worked Danny was beginning to fear that he might go crazy. Well, crazy-er, since the root of his problem was unfailingly insane.

The very act of getting out the milk, sugar, cocoa and vanilla was soothing all on its own, even if it did nothing to detract from the worry that was his constant companion now. It had started innocuously enough with the night Sam had woke him up from a sound sleep. In her bedroom. And Danny had no explanation for how he got there, not then, and not three months later. Worse yet was the fact that he'd started keeping track of these lapses he had.

At least three times a week he found himself in the kitchen with no explanation for getting there. Once there had even been two bowls in the sink and the sticky sweet of ice cream still clinging to them. He'd had himself checked out as best he could, with Sam taking the medical route and Tucker the technological. But none of them had an answer for the way he seemed to find himself in all sorts of places.

He'd even thought of calling Jazz, but she was so busy with college that it wouldn't be fair to drag her into this mess. He could handle it, he could always handle it. So what if the last time he'd woke up he was standing in the living room in his ghost form? Or that he was beginning to remember conversations that he'd never had? Entire conversations that seemed to be fairly accurate when he let things drop in conversation with his mother.

"Oh, god. I'm losing it," he muttered as he poured up the hot cocoa, steaming and fresh into a mug. The sauce pan he'd heated it in went straight into the sink with some water run inside it, and Danny huddled himself around the warm, chocolate confection at the table for several minutes, just trying to empty his mind before he thought anymore about his impending insanity.

"Sweetie?"

Danny's head jerked up and tension flooded his body until he realized that it was just his mother. The fear and worry certainly didn't help his tightly wound trigger, and he was forever thankful that he instinctively recognized his mom's voice before he'd gone on the offensive.

"Danny, is something wrong?" she asked as she pulled up a chair next to him, eyes wide and worried as she laid a hand on his arm.

"Mom," he said softly. "How do you know if you're going crazy?"

"Are you sure I'm the best person to ask, Danny?" Maddie asked him wryly.

He gave her a weak grin. "No, but I've never been nuts before."

"Tell me what's going on, sweetie."

And he did, carefully editing it so there was no mention of ghosts, or powers, or ghost halves, and definitely no mention of waking up in Sam's room. It didn't actually take long once he got started, and the relief he felt at confiding in his mother was profound, the comfort he'd been looking for so badly just there. It was something, he supposed as he finished telling her of his fears and his worries, that only a mother could do.

"You're not crazy, Danny," Maddie told him as she took the now empty mug from his hands and rose to leave it in the sink, soaking in the water that filled the saucepan. Danny almost followed, but instead just sat at the table staring at his hands.

"How do you know, Mom?"

She was quiet for a few minutes, the only sound her hands in the water as she smoothed a sponge across ceramic and metal alike. Then the rush of rinsing and the clink and clatter of putting the dishes in the drainer before she drew a shallow breath to answer. "Because, sweetie, you've sleepwalked for years. Ever since you were a little boy."

If she'd told Danny that he'd been born a girl, he wouldn't have been more freaked.


	76. Relaxation

100. Relaxation

**Possibly excerpted from **_**Ravens Claws**_**. If not, consider it an amusing outtake that I think of as 'Friday Nights in the Ghost Zone.'**

The third hand in and Danny still wasn't sure what he was doing. It was one thing to try his hand at poker when the best player was his age and still lost just as much as he won, but it was something entirely different to find himself playing like he was right now: two angels and an omniscient ghost. Well, as close to omniscient as anything could be without actually being God, whom Danny now knew without a doubt existed.

Absently he twitched his shoulder to try and relieve a bit of itching. That was the only thing that sucked about having wings. Well, other than the fact that having them meant that he was dead. And the molting, because that was kind of a pain. But the itching did get on his nerves; it just never seemed to go away.

"Alright," Danny said on a sigh. "Give me three. And I suck at this game," he added as he tossed away the three cards, a five, eight and ten from completely different houses. All it left him with was a pair of queens, but he could at least hope to get another queen, or maybe even another pair, what with the three Clockwork was sliding across the table at him now.

At least they weren't playing for money. Or sexual favors, like Tucker was always trying to convince Sam to play for. Danny sniggered at that thought, knowing that he'd never share it with the angels, though he might tell Clockwork before he left. Clockwork would at least find it amusing, since he wasn't a angel and therefore some type of heavenly asexual being without lust in his heart and fire in his loins. Or some such nonsense that Aziraphale had preached at him one morning when Danny hadn't been able to take his eyes off of Sam's legs.

He certainly hated to break it to the angel that, no matter how dead he was, Danny would never be able to look at Sam with anything less than a lustful… well, everything.

It was a casual glance that Danny gave the table and the three other players. Aziraphale was slouched gracefully against the chaise that Crowley had conjured for him. He'd never seen Aziraphale do anything like that, but Crowley seemed to do a lot of things an angel wasn't supposed to do. But considering that Danny did several things that an angel wasn't supposed to do himself, he couldn't point fingers or ask questions.

Well, he could point fingers, because if Danny wasn't mistaken (and he knew he wasn't), Crowley had just conjured one of the cards halfway down the deck of cards into his hand. It was smoothly done, and if Danny hadn't been staring at the deck of cards right then he might not have noticed it. But he had, and he sighed.

"You know he's cheating, don't you?" Danny asked Aziraphale as he shrugged a wing at Crowley. "He's an angel; he's not supposed to cheat."

Crowley only snickered as he arched a dark, well shaped brow over the black lenses of his sunglasses, that he refused to take off even here in the Ghost Zone. "You might, young Prodigal," the angel drawled at Danny, "consider watching your ghost friend, as he's cheating worse than anything I've even begun to consider."

Danny rolled his eyes. "Please. At least Clockwork is at least trying to pretend he's not cheating."

"I can see several futures, that doesn't mean I'm cheating," Clockwork put in as he looked down at his cards. "Also, I fold."

Nobody even blinked as Clockwork's body shifted and left an infant holding the five cards in hand, only to expertly toss them towards the center of the table with practiced ease. If it had been odd to see a baby looking over a poker table like a grown man, the angels had gotten used to it. Danny hadn't even thought twice, long accustomed to the oddity of Clockwork's shifting form. Danny only sighed again before picking up the three cards he'd just been given, not even looking at them as he glanced over at Aziraphale again.

"You're cheating, too, aren't you?" he asked cynically. The guilty flush was all the answer that Danny needed before he sat back in his chair, unconsciously twitching a wing out of the way as he collapsed back. "Come on, you don't need to cheat. _I_ don't even know how to play that well, and _I'm_ not trying to cheat!"

"It was only the once," Aziraphale protested as Crowley smirked.

"That's what they all say," Danny muttered, finally looking at his cards. Then his face brightened as a smile broke out. "And without cheating, I win."

He laid his cards down, face up: three queens and two aces.


	77. Innocence

8. Innocence

She wasn't sure if they would ever forgive her for what she'd done all those months ago, but then, Sam had no intention of asking for any. She'd needed time, to her self, for herself, and if they couldn't understand that then it wasn't really her problem. It was just so hard to face all of them after… Her hands clenched on the steering wheel. Even now, seven months later, she had a hard time thinking it much less saying it. But whether or not she could, would or wanted to say the words, it didn't change the facts.

Danny was dead.

It had been hard to see it happen, harder still to know that Danny had never gotten the chance to tell his mom and dad the truth. He'd died in front of them, and they didn't even know that it was their son until after it was all over.

She took a deep breath and exhaled, hating the way it near shuddered out of her. It couldn't be helped, she was still too sensitive to it. To everything, really. The uncertain reception she expected wasn't exactly reassuring either. Oh, god. She missed him so much—it had been so hard, so damned hard since he'd died. But it couldn't be changed, it couldn't be helped.

At least she wasn't breaking down into tears every five seconds now, though that hadn't been entirely her fault. She just felt cold, no matter that the heat was blasting as she drove up the snowy stretch of highway on her way home, to Amity Park. The truly sad thing was that she wasn't even driving home, not to the house where she had been raised for eighteen years. That would be nothing but pure stupidity, and a fight she wasn't ready to fight yet. A fight she shouldn't have to fight.

No, she was driving straight for Fenton Works, and the people that she considered her true family, no matter that they weren't related by flesh and blood. Some families were built out of other things. But she, at least, knew both kind, and the good and bad that came with them.

She was tired when she finally saw the exit for Amity, and took it with a silent prayer. If God was listening… It was a big if, and maybe it didn't matter, because He didn't answer every prayer sent. Certainly hadn't answered her desperate plea to spare Danny. But maybe he'd listen to her plea this time, not desperate, but definitely hopeful. After all, it was the only thing she had left of him.

The bright neon glared at her as she turned onto their street, harsh and unforgiving. It was fanciful, she supposed, to think that the sign was condemning her for disappearing. "But I had to," she murmured as she pulled the car to a stop in front of the looming brownstone. "I had to." The words were firm, not hesitant or questioning. She had needed the time, and now she was here. And if they'd missed those months, she couldn't help it now. But she'd needed it, and taken it, and there was nothing they could do or say to make her regret it.

She turned the car off and watched as the softly falling snow started to scatter across the windshield. With now wipers to drive it away it made lacey designs across the glass. Pretty, and an easy distraction that she was refusing to take. No, she had more important things to do. Sam glanced from the front door of Fenton Works where the porch light was just now coming on and front door was opening. Sam breathed a deep breath as she got out of the car.

Jack and Maddie both were standing there, and Jazz. Tucker, too, and she hadn't expected that. But they would have called Tucker when she told them she was nearly there. But she was stalling now, and she knew it. The snow was still light as she stood there, dusting her shoulders, apprehension curling in her stomach. She was afraid, but she couldn't be afraid. Not now, not when they were watching her, waiting for her.

Bracing herself Sam opened the backdoor and reached in, making sure that the blanket covered the carrier before unbuckling it and lifting it out of the car. Oh yes, she had more important things to do.


	78. Stars

34. Stars

**Stalking, 2**

If anyone thought it odd that Sam Manson refused to speak to Danny Fenton for more than a month, no one commented on it. In fact, most looked on with unabashed interest, because the boy's pursuit of the girl was nothing if not comical. Some of the more sympathetic to Danny's plight pitied him and shared their own tales of womanly wiles and the things they went through for their girlfriends. These were the conversations where Danny would walk away with his tongue bleeding from the force with which he'd been biting his tongue.

It wouldn't do to laugh at them when they complained about their girlfriends. After all, they would only date these girls for so long before letting them go as they pursued the BBD. Danny already had his bigger, better deal. Once he got a hold of Sam, he was never letting her go.

The majority of Casper High's female population seemed to drift between adoring him and hating him, even if none of them really knew why Sam refused to speak to him. It was a girl thing, to assume the worst. Of course, if they knew the truth, they might have actually taken measures against him. Danny and Tucker reasoned that if Sam was keeping her silence, then they would too. It was the safest route for the males in question, even if they both thought Sam had overreacted.

And, of course, rumors ran rampant across the Casper High campus. They were wild and varied, from the mild he said/she said arguments, right up into cheating and pregnancy. For the most part it was harmless, and both took it as such, even when forcibly dragged to a parent/teacher conference that included Lancer, Fenton's and Manson's to be questioned about the nature of the relationship and if Sam was, indeed, pregnant.

He knew she was still furious with him over that, even if he hadn't had anything to do with it. Sure she was angry with him, but she was the one who refused to talk to him, to listen to him, to hear the voice of reason. That's why he was going for drastic measures. He was enlisting an outsider's help.

Lancer had been agreeable to the plan once Danny had fessed up to him exactly what had happened. It was refreshing to be told he was simply a friendly, if somewhat stupid boy who apparently had some form of ADD to even consider speaking to another girl when he was trying to ask one out. But—and Danny was ever so grateful for that but—lancer could understand that it wasn't in Danny's nature to be rude. (Excepting, of course, to Vlad, but Danny didn't mention their animosity.)

So Sam was getting detention. At least this time she'd be right when she laid all of the blame on Danny's shoulders, because who really wants to have four hours worth of detention on one of the shortest days of the year?

All it took was a forced confrontation in the middle of the cafeteria that ended with Danny wearing half a bottle of blue cheese salad dressing.

Danny had at least had the foresight to bring a change of clothes, and when they convened in Lancer's second story classroom for detention at four o'clock, Danny was ready. The tone was set, though Sam had no idea, and when Lancer left the instructions for them to sit quietly and think on what they'd done wrong, Danny sat. He ignored the negative vibes he could feel roiling off of Sam, even if it was a flaring beacon to his ghost, and he waited. Four o'clock, and the sun was scheduled to set at six-thirteen. All he had to do was pretend patience, when inside he was truly dancing with nerves.

At six o'clock Danny disappeared. He wasn't sure if Sam noticed or not, but he had to get the rest of his plan together, and all that took was a quick and quiet trip down to the teacher's parking lot where Mr. Lancer was waiting with the take out Danny had asked him to pick up. It was a bemused smile the teacher gave his student as Danny took them with a grateful thanks and ran back into the school before changing back to ghost and heading straight up through the ceiling and then the roof. The blanket was already there and waiting, and all he had to do was lay the food out and light the storm lanterns. That would wait until full dark was nearly on them, and it wasn't very far off. He wasted a few minutes by making sure Lancer was gone before heading for his car and snagging a few CD's. It wasn't original, but some soft music certainly wouldn't hurt. He hoped.

And then the sunset came, all brilliant oranges, fiery reds, purple that was so deep as it spread across the sky that he could count each individual star. It was time; he sank through the roof and dropped lightly in front of Sam.

She had her nose buried in a book, which he supposed wasn't exactly breaking the rules, but he didn't care since the official detention had been over with since the moment he'd escaped the classroom. Danny didn't say anything, didn't even try and smile as he reached out and plucked the book out of her hands. Neither did he flinch at the icy glare she leveled at him, nor the annoyed curl his lips gave as she bit out a single word.

"What?"

"Come with me," was all he said as Danny reached out for her hand, not giving her a chance to argue or say no.

She didn't fight him as he pulled her closer and then lifted them up through the roof, not did she yank away when her feet finally touched the ground and Danny shifted back to his human form, eyes searing blue as he stared at her.

"What, Danny?" Her voice was almost hard, but what bothered him more than her blatant hostility was the tiredness to her tone, and the hurt that lay just beneath that.

"I just want you to listen to me, Sam. Why else do you think I've been following you around?" he asked, keeping his voice soft so that she wouldn't feel attacked. She hadn't even noticed what he'd brought her up to, the almost romantic dinner, music and stars. He just needed to get her to listen to him. He saw her eyes flicker to the roof access, but he gave her a grim smile now. "They're locked. The only way you're leaving here, Sam, is if you listen to me."

She gave him a bitter laugh. "You do realize that this is stalking, right? And now kidnapping."

The smile that swept across Danny's face now was anything but amused, and his tone was almost laughing as he told her, "Sometimes it's called 'courting,' Sam."

It was worth it, all of the stress and worry and complete and utter fear he'd felt in the last month, to see her face as she looked up at him, and then finally around her to see what he was trying to do. The surprise, the almost instant understanding, the near wonder in her eyes when she finally looked back to him. He leaned closed, hugging her and holding her tightly against him, her hair silky against his cheek and smelling faintly fruity as it moved. He sighed as she stiffened and he pulled back to look her in the eyes.

"I was only saying good-bye to her," he said, his voice raw with intensity. "I don't like Michelle, I never have, not like that. I've never dated her. In fact, Sam, I haven't dated anyone since 10th grade… Or hadn't you noticed?"

"So you dragged me up here to tell me all this?" Sam asked softly, looking around again.

Danny gave her a sheepish little grin. "Well, I was hoping for dinner, too, since detention is over." Sam gave him an odd look and Danny pointed to the teacher's parking lot, where he could easily see that it was empty. "See? No more detention."

"Oh," Sam said in an appreciative murmur. "You're good. You even got Lancer in on this. So what now? It's just you, and me, and the stars."

"Mm-hm," he agreed as he pulled her closer and brushed his lips against hers. It startled her for a moment, but he felt the tension seeping out of her body within seconds.

"One day," he whispered to her, his voice a promise in the cool evening air. "One day I'll give you a star, and you can wear it forever."

---

**Let us all give thanks to Graywand, whose review was the inspiration for this.**


	79. Sorrow

28. Sorrow

**Choice, 2**

_You have a choice to make, Samantha._

The words slipped in and around and across her mind without ever going through it. It had gone through once. Once, such a terrible once that sent the weight of the world, the universe, crushing down on her slender shoulders with a power that near killed her with the grief of it. She would grieve; she already had, was grieving still. So hard to know that she _had_ to do it, that she really had no other choice. Not and remain Sam Manson, the Sam Manson who was worthy of being friends with Danny Fenton, Danny Phantom. The Sam Manson who had won him, who was his best friend, his confidant, his lover.

_Likely it will be the hardest choice you've ever had to make._

Tears pricked her eyes as she sat beside him. She'd chosen the park for it, the place they'd first kissed, the place they'd gone for their first date, the place where he'd first said, "I love you." The fountain was almost musical behind them as she watched it in the fading light of day. She'd thought about it ever since the choice had been given her, agonized over what she would do, what she would say. She'd thought about dressing nicely, tossed that idea right out the window.

This would be done as everything else she had done; as Sam. so jeans, a t-shirt, her boots. Just Sam, because she was making this choice with her eyes open, as wide open as they could ever be.

"It's… I want to say it's not you, Danny, but I can't," she said softly. He was tense beside her, had been that way since he'd met her in the park. She supposed that he could see it written on her face, feel it radiating off of her in agonizing waves of anguish.

_You'll hurt him, and you'll hurt you. No matter what you choose, that is the legacy that precedes you._

"I—we can't do this anymore, Danny." Sam's voice was almost a whisper, but it didn't waver. Her eyes were tightly shut now, so that she wouldn't have to see the way his jaw tightened, or the way his eyes were suddenly darker, shocked and… devastated.

"You've been very good to me." Wooden, stilted, _lies_. "But it's time for us to move on."

His voice was harsh, cutting through the silence as if it were ripped from his throat. "Is there someone else?" She could hear the way his fingers clenched the wood of the bench, splintering it beneath his iron grip.

The world spun around her for a moment as Sam say there. In the seconds that he said the words, the bench was harder beneath her thighs, the air was cooler against her skin, her fingers seemed like ice as she held to her arms tightly. A clean break, she knew that was what would be best. It wouldn't help to add to the hurt she was causing him, to add to the guilt she would have to live with for the rest of her life.

_Your decision must be final, Samantha. There can be no going back, no maybe's, no what if's. make your choice, and stand by it._

"Yes," she breathed.

And when he said nothing she dared to open her eyes and look at him, truly look and see the damage that she had just caused. There was a terrible blankness to his face, but it was there to see if you knew what to look for. And Sam did know, she had learned from a lifetime of friendship, from years of love. There, in the so fine lines at the edges of his eyes; there in the paler skin around his lips; there in the way that his breathing had slowed, not sped.

It made her heart ache in her chest as she watched him, and the tears started to spill over now. There was no way that she could even hope to hold them back in the face of what she'd just done to him: uprooted his entire life, the trust and faith he'd had in her. It was almost in Sam's mind to reach out to him, to tell him the truth, the lie, to hold on to him and tell him how much she loved him.

And maybe she would have, if it hadn't been for the sudden fear, that even if she tried to tell him now, he wouldn't believe her, that he'd push her away.

_It isn't about whether you love him, or he loves you. It isn't about how much. It's about the right thing. It's about making a choice._

And oh, god, she had.

_What will you choose?_

They sat in silence for the longest time, Sam quietly crying and Danny staring into space at nothing. When he finally moved, it wasn't to reach for her, or to push her away. It wasn't to leap into the air and fly away from what had happened, it wasn't to even try and fight it. Hell, it wasn't even acceptance, and Sam knew it.

Instead he just stood, never saying a word, shoulder sloughing and eyes turned down, and walked away.

She let him.

_The right thing is seldom the easiest thing, Samantha. It's oftentimes the hardest thing that you could ever do. Some people believe that that is how one knows that it's the right thing. What I'm asking you to do now… You'll never forgive me for it. You'll never forgive each other for it. But I swear to you, it will keep him alive, and in doing so it will save everyone._

---

**S/he who tells me what just happened will get a prize. A real and true prize.**


	80. Sacrifice

57. Sacrifice

Oh, he was so late. He was supposed to be at the airport an hour ago, waiting on Sam to come back from her year at school in New York. And here he was still trying to negotiate the traffic into the airport itself, much less maneuver his way through the various lane changes to find the pick-up for her airline. He figured that since he was this late, and she'd decided that he didn't need to do anything but pick her up, he didn't need to find space in the parking garage.

Of course, that was before they realized that the drive to O'Hare was going to take three times as long as Danny had thought. But the drive, which should only have been an hour or two, was way better than having to wait another three days for Sam to come home. So here he was, _finally_ headed for the pickup lanes. And his phone rang.

He knew without looking that it was Sam; who needed caller ID when you had ESP with your almost girlfriend? Danny reached for the phone where it was tossed carelessly in the seat beside him as he tried to avoid cutting someone off and at the same time still make the lane change so he could head for the Delta lane.

"I know, I know," he started as he muttered a curse and went ahead and cut off another impatient driver. "I'm late, I'm sorry, I'm almost there."

And Sam's ringing laughter. "Your mother and sister both called me to tell me you got hung up with Skulker. You're safe, I'm not planning on maiming you. I just wanted to warn you."

"About what?" he asked as he spied a familiar stack of luggage five or six car lengths in front of him. "Your stacks of luggage? And I swear Sam, you didn't leave with all that stuff."

She hummed at him for a moment before saying anything. He saw her glance over her shoulder from where she was sitting, facing the other way. Her hair was a little longer, and she was wearing sunglasses, but he could still tell it was her, even without the smile.

"Gifts. Supplies. Things I'll be needing for a bit," she said noncommittally as Danny inched forward another foot or so. "Actually, I wanted to tell you not to flip out when you see me, okay? New York… Let's just say that it wasn't what I said it would be, okay?"

"Why the hell would I flip? I haven't seen you since you left last July, I'm dying to see you." The car in front of him flipped out of its lane and into the through lane the other side of him and Danny gunned the engine as hard as he dared, considering there were people loading luggage and themselves all around him. Only one more car length to go and he would right next to her. "You, me, movie, popcorn. Yes?" he asked as another car moved and he pulled to a smooth halt next to the stack of suitcases in Sam's signature black and purple.

There was a click, and he hung up his phone as he realized Sam had done the same thing to him, before he slid out of the car and headed around it to Sam, where she was levering herself up from the bench. And Danny came to a dead stop three feet from her as she turned to him and he could exactly why she was having to lever herself up.

She was pregnant.

The happiness he'd been flying high on all morning suddenly evaporated, and Danny's thoughts of a movie and maybe some cuddling died an unhappy little death as he looked at her. She looked nervous, worrying her lip between her teeth as she ran an absent hand across smooth distention of her abdomen.

"Sam?"

She laughed nervously. "It's not what it looks like, Danny, I swear. It's why I went to New York."

"Because you wanted to get pregnant?" he managed. "Because you definitely couldn't have been pregnant when you went."

"Um, something like that?" She swallowed and glanced away before meeting his eyes firmly again. "I have a cousin who needed a surrogate mother. I volunteered."

Danny arched an eyebrow. "And you didn't think to mention this until you came back… How far along are you?"

"Seven months," Sam answered. "It's a girl, and it took five tries to get her to take. But it worked out because I'm RH negative like Marie, which is why I volunteered."

Danny continued to stare at her for a moment. "You do realize that this hurts my brain, right?"

Sam laughed suddenly, and Danny couldn't help but join in. "Don't worry, Danny. Just think of me as the Virgin Sam."

"Oh god," Danny muttered. "You do realize that any and all awkwardness just left, right?" She nodded happily as he reached out and carefully pulled her close for a hug. "Missed you, Sam. So movie, popcorn, you, me and now the rugrat. Yes?"

"Yes, Danny."


	81. Standing Still

42. Standing Still

It was the strangest thing, Maddie decided as she carefully soldered another connection she was making. The house was empty: Jack had gone with Jazz for an early lunch, her birthday gift to him (and a much needed rest Maddie found she needed from her husband's exuberance), and Danny wasn't even in the city. He'd gone camping with Tucker for the weekend. It was a boy's only thing and Maddie knew how upset Sam had been when she'd learned that he'd be gone for two whole days. But she doubted that the time apart would be detrimental; if anything it would only make the relationship that much stronger. Besides, overnight was the longest they'd been separated since they started dating. It would be good.

But it really was the strangest thing. Since she was all alone in the house, there really was no explanation for the noises she heard coming from upstairs. A small sound, the faintest scrape of maybe a foot. She'd heard it when she stopped just a few minutes ago to get a drink from the kitchen and headed right back down to the lab without giving it a thought. Until she was back in the lab and her hands were occupied by solder and gun and her mind was given freedom to think about whatever it might as she gave herself over to the creation of… well, something ghost related, if Jack's plans were right.

They seldom were, but she could generally make whatever he wanted work with him none the wiser.

But a footstep. Maybe they were being robbed. Danny did have an expensive computer, and Maddie knew that he hadn't taken his laptop with him on his camping trip. Not to mention the television and the DVD player, the stereo, the… And his room was just above the kitchen…

Her mind made up, Maddie lay her tools down and reached for the Fenton bat before heading for the stairs up to the kitchen. She would have grabbed one of the ectoguns, but really, what would they do against a normal human intruder? No, better take the bat and just plan on having a minor work out when she found whoever was bothering her peaceful morning.

And there was an intruder, she could tell that much as she emerged into the kitchen. There was a moan from above her, deep and very masculine, and she wondered if Danny had booby trapped his room. It wouldn't be the first time; Danny had a habit of trying to protect what was his. He got that from his father, Maddie knew, because she never booby trapped anything. She simply knew that very few people would try to take what was hers.

Her feet were steady and silent on the stairs as she ascended, her hands tight on the handle of the bat. The landing was empty, and all was quiet—Danny's door was closed. It was only a few steps to the door, and Maddie wrapped a hand carefully around the knob as she prepared to open it and attack the intruder. And then she stopped dead in her tracks as her jaw dropped.

That sound definitely wasn't from a man, and it certainly didn't sound like it was a team of burglars bent on stealing thousands of dollars worth of electronics. And then, again.

"Yes, please," came the soft, pleading voice, and the Fenton bat drooped in a suddenly limp grip as Maddie turned the knob and opened the door.

"Oh, my god," she breathed.

Pale skin and dark hair moving beneath him, and _him_. What was _he_ doing here? He didn't belong here, not at all, but there was no mistaking that lightly gold skin, that shock white hair. Him, with her, and dear god what was she going to do? How was she going to tell Danny that his girlfriend was cheating on him… with a ghost? The bat fell, limp grip now nerveless, to clatter against the floor with a solid thump.

"Mo—addie," Phantom said with a stutter, eyes wide and glowing faintly as a blush spread across his face. The sheet was pulled over the pair in a hurry to at least pretend to modesty, and Maddie shook her head.

Sam's voice was nervous as she reached for Phantom's hand. "Mrs. Fenton, I can explain."

And Phantom, now looking distinctly faint and green. "Oh yeah, Sam, because this is exactly how I pictured telling her."

Somehow, Maddie's mind was still functioning beneath the layers of shock, and she couldn't help but wonder if it really was strange at all. Because in the Fenton household, it seemed like strange was only relative.


	82. Happiness

29. Happiness

"Hey, buddy!" Danny said as he ducked his face into the steamy air of the bathroom. The small boy splashing in the tub, and outside of it, and all over Sam, too, smiled hugely at his father. "So, pictures today?"

"Uh-huh," Robbie nodded back as he set one of his plastic dinosaurs to gleefully attacking Sam's arm, childish giggles painting the air.

She glanced up at Danny with a wry smile. "I don't suppose you came to relieve me?" she asked as she held out her half soaked shirt.

"Aw, come on, Sam. I'll cook dinner," he offered.

"Sure you will," she drawled back as she got to her feet and gave Danny a quick kiss. "Your finger will cook dinner with delivery. Pure magic, that."

He grinned and slipped past her. "Alright, alright. I didn't really need to stay dry anyway. Don't suppose they know why three-year-olds can create minor tsunamis in the tub, yes, do they?"

Sam had already left the bathroom, but he could hear her laughing as she headed for the kitchen, "Not yet, it ranks up there with cats and how much room they take up."

"So," Danny said as he folded himself down to sit next to the bathtub, manfully not wincing as his pants immediately started darkening with water. "Did you take a good picture for daddy?"

"Nope," came the chirped reply.

Danny raised an eyebrow at this, but wasn't surprised since Robbie was picky about what he did and who for. For instance, he'd eat his vegetables for Sam, but not for Danny. And he'd sing along with his _Land Before Time_ movies, sort of, for Danny, but not for Sam. and he'd only ever do his 'Oscar-time' dance when he watched _A Shark Tale_ at his Aunt Jazz's. Very picky. Bright, was what the family decided, and left it at that.

"So you took a good picture for Mommy?" was Danny's next question.

"Nope," was Robbie's answer again, and Danny stared at the little boy, perplexed as he proceeded to blow bubbles up and swat them with another dinosaur, a dimetradon if Danny remembered right, unperturbed as most of the bath bubbles landed in his dark hair.

And so it went on, Grammy and Pop-Pop (also known as Danny's parents, because the Manson's would drop dead before they were called anything but Grandma and Grandpa, and Robbie never actually did anything for them anyway), Aunt Jazz and Uncle Brian, Auntie Val, Uncle Tucker and Aunt Dana. He even tried Danni, but to no avail; each time he just got a cheerful 'nope' in response.

So Danny could only conclude that the question he was asking was the wrong one.

"Alright, then," he said after a few minutes of sitting back and watching his son splash around. "Then what kind of picture did you take, Robbie?"

Robbie immediately grinned and stood up, his hands up around his face and fingers waggling. "A creepy and spidery one!" he proclaimed before plopping back into his bathwater.

Danny just laughed as he cradled his face in his hands. "Oh, you are your mother's child."

---

**Yeah, this is what **_**my**_** son told me last night when I asked about **_**his**_** picture day. Less splashing since he's five next Sunday, but I'm not even joking about the creepy/spidery thing. Definitely my kid. And for the record, he does all of those things for me only. :P**


	83. Foreign

65

27. Foreign

"_Please_," she whispers. She isn't sure if it's depraved or deprived, what with the way she's begging him to stop teasing, to stop this infuriatingly slow pace, to hold her tightly and make her scream his name against the sweat slick skin of his chest as they make love. She knows that she doesn't care.

She's trapped beneath his beneath; it's certainly not the first they've fallen into bed together. She doubts it will be the last, no—it's become a regular habit in the last year. But to fall into bed the way they are? All soft touches, his hands a gentle pressure at the skin of her sides, smooth, gliding strokes that seem to move in time with her heartbeat… No, this is different, as different as it's ever been.

His lips are so gentle against hers even as his body tenses and rides his own pleasure out, nestled deeply inside her. And it slips out, breathed as she sighs against him, into his mouth, her body still trembling in the aftermath of the orgasm. "I love you."

She didn't mean to say, almost doesn't realize that it's been brought to life in the silence and stillness between them, until he looks down at her, body still perched atop hers, weight leaned down on one arm as he holds her. In that moment Sam feels the fear start to rise. For all that they've faced life and death together and made love more times than she can remember; no matter that the words have been there for years, built on friendship since childhood and tempered by trials few have ever faced.

They feel strange on her tongue, exotic and foreign, much like the way she feels anytime he touches her, every time he tells her how badly he wants her, and how beautiful and desirable she is. She can hardly believe the words as he says them, and truly cannot believe she's said these now.

She can't believe it at all, until he answers her back.


	84. Annoyance

65

69. Annoyance

She wasn't sure how much good it would do for them to be sitting in the middle of Clockwork's tower arguing paradox, but Sam wouldn't leave it for the world. It was a sight rarely seen, Danny letting his temper get the better of him, and she wasn't going to forgo it willingly. Especially after what they'd all just been through, and knowing that it could have been easily avoided if _someone_ (and she wasn't naming names, even if she was standing in front of a time portal that showed the past, present and future in the nearly omniscient nameless ghost's lair) had just dropped a few words into Danny's ear.

But he hadn't, and Amity had suffered for it. As usual.

It was, in a word, annoying. Highly annoying, and even Danny's venomous glower and harsh words weren't making her feel much better—she hurt too much for that, and the thought of the clean up that they had to return home to wasn't exactly pleasant. Eventually, she mused, they'd have to tell their families. If only to avoid cleaning up the messes they made when they were too injured, and she was pretty sure they all were.

As it was Tucker was still at home trying to salvage his technology even with a sprained wrist. Well, they thought it was sprained. Fractured was still an option that they'd explore when they dragged him to the ER. Danny had his usual battle wounds, but he'd heal up within a few days to be good as new with a hint of a scar to add to his growing collection. And Sam… Oh, she was going to scar. A piece of flying wood from an exploding sign had gouged her right down one arm.

Now, she wasn't shallow or materialistic, but that didn't make her happy, either. But having Danny call Clockwork a twit did help, if only just a little.

"You knew they were going to come, you knew they were going to try and destroy the town," Danny was saying to Clockwork heatedly. "You helped me before, why not now?"

And Clockwork's predictable answer, "Time is not something to play with, Danny. It can't be changed just because you will it."

"Oh, but if _you_ will it you can change it, right?" Sam interjected, one eyebrow arched as she stared the older ghost down. "Seems awful funny to me that the only times you intervene are when it affects the Ghost Zone. A little too bipartisan for my tastes."

Clockwork shot her a look and Sam frowned at him, surprised that he wouldn't see her butting in and taking Danny's part. Hell, all of their parts. "Don't look at me like that, Clockwork. I'm not stupid and I can talk paradox and prejudice just as well as you and Danny."

"There are more things to consider than a single town and its occupants," was the only thing that Clockwork said to Sam, and her frown become an outright glare.

She pointed at the myriad windows as they watched the world and Ghost Zone alike. "You watch everything, everywhere, all the time, Clockwork. Don't tell me that you could do nothing—I refuse to accept that when it's mine and Tucker's and Danny's lives you're risking." Then she stopped, a fleeting image catching and taking hold in her brain.

"Oh my god. You watch everything, even people in the shower or having sex."

Clockwork didn't answer but Danny's face was startled and then disbelieving as he looked from her to Clockwork and back. The older ghost didn't bat an eye or attempt to deny it, and Sam started laughing in a choked, almost grossed out sort of way.

"So… that means…" Danny stopped and suddenly his voice was accusing as he pointed a finger at Clockwork. "You've seen Sam naked."

Sam flushed and shook her head as the ghost's mouth dropped open. "So," she drawled. "You're really nothing more than a glorified peeping tom, are you?"

It was worth the whole fiasco just to see the Time Master's face.


	85. Light

65

3. Light

"Aren't you tired, Sam?" Danny yawned as he stretched out on his bed, one hand holding the phone to his ear as the other tugged at his shirt until it was up and over his head, the cotton brushing against the phone for a moment before he shoved it back against his ear and lay back in bed.

She laughed softly. "How many times do I have to remind you that I'm nocturnal?"

"You're five hours ahead of me, and it's two in the morning here," Danny mumbled as he did that math, just as he had every night for nearly three weeks. "That means it's seven in the morning for you." His voice turned suspicious. "Have you really been up all night or did you just get up extra early to call me?"

Her laughter came across the line again, sweet and amused, and Danny smiled at the sound of it. "I've been up all night. Just because the parents dragged me to London doesn't mean that I'm going to give up my freedom."

He snorted. "Freedom. Which is why you missed Christmas with me and Tucker."

There was silence for a moment and he regretted saying it. It wasn't Sam's fault that her parents had made her go to England for the holidays. Nope, that was their fault, completely, especially when they'd left promptly the first week of December, dragging Sam out of the last few weeks of school and forcing her to take her own exams early. And then trying to ground her when she got a C on the Calculus exam.

"I miss you guys," she finally said softly. "It wasn't Christmas without you."

He tried to laugh, tried to make light of it. "Sure it was. We all still got presents from each other. Webcast worked out alright." The silence after made Danny sigh. "I missed you, too." Silence again as Danny flushed with what he'd said and tried to fix it. "I mean, we both missed you. I know Tucker did, he kept telling me how much he wanted to challenge you to a game, and it wasn't the same without you there for the hot chocolate…"

She didn't laugh this time, or even try to, and Danny rubbed the heel of his free hand over tired eyes. "Sam."

"It's alright, Danny. I missed a good time," she said in answer to his unspoken question.

"No, Sam," he felt very nearly defeated by the down tone of her voice. "I missed you. I miss you. I wish you were here."

It was painful, like peeling a band-aid off to admit it, even if it was far less than what he would have said to her. Far less than he had said to her before, their fledgling romance ended abruptly with a plane ticket and an unspoken agreement not to speak of it—the distance between them was greater now than ever before, too great even for his powers to cross. At least, not without anyone realizing he was gone, or he would have already been at her side.

"I thought we decided not to," she murmured across the ocean, and Danny smiled at the sound of it.

"And I thought we just put it on hold since you were going away for the holidays," he answered. Her heard her breath in, surprised, and smiled at it. "Sam, did you really think that I was going to let you get away from me that easily once I had you?"

"I'm not a piece of property, Danny," she grumbled, but even in the darkness, half asleep as he was, he could tell that there was no force in the words. Just a show to hide how flustered he'd made her, and the smile grew. "Are you sure?"

"Oh, Sam," he said softly, the hesitancy in her words so clear to him that he shook his head and sat back up as he spoke. "I couldn't be more sure." She was quiet and he was tired, the clock just going two, the plastic of phone was warm against his cheek and the only thing wrong with it was that she wasn't there with him, but he said it anyway.

"I think I'm in love with you."


	86. Love

65

2. Love

**3am, 4 (fini)**

It had been the day from hell.

If Danny had lived through a worse day in his eighteen years, he couldn't remember it. Not even when he'd pitted himself against Pariah Dark. Or himself. And he'd barely survived those particular days. And the day that his mother had informed him about a sleepwalking habit that he'd never known of. That had only been marginally better than today. Of course, when she'd told him that he'd figured that the worry and fear would probably kill him.

He was lucky he didn't already have an ulcer, though he wasn't sure if a single month was time enough to develop one.

Of course, if he didn't have one by now, he wasn't sure he'd get one. But he'd at least been taking extra special care to _not_ sleepwalk anymore. Granted, Sam might have a point when she told him that hunting ghosts until he was so exhausted he could barely walk, much less fly, wasn't exactly taking care… But it worked and, much to his secret dismay, Danny hadn't woke up in Sam's room since the first time he'd started it.

But it really had been the day from hell. From before dawn till well after dusk he's slaved away with his duties, trying to juggle school and ghost fighting until he'd given it up as a lost cause before lunch. For whatever reason the ghosts had all decided that today was the day to try Danny Phantom's mettle, a fact that irked said Phantom to no end. He had _plan_, for heavens sake! He had a girl to ask out, and anytime he thought he'd have a chance to ask Sam bam! A new ghost fight popped up out of thin air.

But he'd done it. He had a month's worth of detention to serve, since he'd cut out of school, and he was grounded for the next two weeks. At least when his dad had done that he hadn't thought to take Danny's phone away, even if he had yanked the modem from his computer. Of course, his mom had returned the modem not an hour later, after he came home from yet another fight. But that was alright, because while he'd been out battling he'd seen Sam, and he'd managed to ask her.

And he'd gotten a yes. A brilliant, wonderful, beautiful yes.

So he'd waited till now, wasting up his time with a shower and bandaging his wounds, and poking at the magnificent bruise that had finally finished spreading up his side to his shoulder and around and down his arm. It was fairly spectacular, nothing like anything Danny had ever had before, and he had to wonder how many ribs he'd broken this time, and the fact that he could still feel the bony bits of his shoulder blade grinding together id he wasn't careful told him how slowly that was healing, too.

Yeah, he'd messed himself up good. And now he'd snuck himself downstairs with his mom and dad asleep, and he was trapped deciding between chocolate and strawberry ice cream. There was something that was always comforting about chocolate—it had that innate 'pick me up' quality that made him understand, if only a little, why his mom and Jazz and Sam always wanted chocolate when they were having their cranky weeks. (And it really was a charitable way of terming it, since all three of them were completely evil to him then…)

But strawberry was his favorite, and it was perfect for celebrating Sam's yes. And for soothing, since it would be at least a few more hours before he could go to sleep with fear of waking up because of bone realigning itself to heal. So strawberry, he decided, his hand already through the front of the freezer door as he felt around looking for the round cardboard container. And then—

"Danny?"

_And oh my god,_ was all Danny could think of as his head twisted to the left to see his mother coming up the stairs from the lab, eyes bleary and half asleep. She was asleep, he'd seen her go into their room with his own two eyes! What was she doing coming up from the lab when she was supposed to already be asleep, and oh, he was so busted, because he wasn't wearing a shirt and his hand was _through_ the freezer door—never mind that it was nearly two in the morning.

"Ice cream?" she asked, and Danny blinked. "Chocolate or strawberry?"

His mouth fell open and he saw his mother's eyes skip over the hand through the door and to the bruises up his pale skin. "Oh, sweetie. It looks like a strawberry night to me."


	87. Waiting

65

55. Waiting

He was a patient man. It was a skill that he had learned through years of ghost fighting, and hunting, and of dealing with ghosts like Plasmius and Clockwork. Mostly Clockwork, but sometimes Vlad reminded Danny how skilled the older man was at patience. It only drove him to be more patient, not daring to let the impatience of youth endanger his friends and family any more than he already did. But he was a very patient man.

But today his infamous patience was at an end. Sam was trying far too much.

So he made a plan.

And as always, the plan backfired. Continuously. Naturally, though, like any good general, Danny had backup plans. His plan B's had plan B's, and those too. Because he wanted an answer to his question and he wasn't going to let her side slip him again. Of course, Danny had to admit if only to himself, she didn't know he was asking a question, so she couldn't possibly be evading an answer. But it was just like her to infuriate him over something like this.

Of course, it was rare in their relationship that she didn't irk him over something on a daily basis. It was part of what amused them, the endless bickering over nonsense. Sam had told him from the day they'd begun dating, and found themselves arguing over extra butter on the popcorn, that it was a sign of how much they trusted each other, the faith they had, that they could argue nonstop over the stupidest things in the world. And they did, until the arguments themselves became another way of saying 'I love you,' and the day didn't seem right without them picking fights over something nonsensical.

So he'd started first thing this morning, calling in for her (which was a normal thing when it came to their anniversary—he's call her in sick all three of their anniversaries now—her coworkers and her boss all thought it terribly romantic, which suited him since he went to great lengths for these occasions) and bringing her breakfast in bed. Of course she hadn't eaten it, instead heading straight for the bathroom with an upset stomach.

But she told him nothing was wrong when he asked, so Danny fell back on plan B: the beach trip.

They'd gotten married early in the year, but regardless of it still being April in Illinois, they always went to the beach. It didn't have the same feel (according to Sam, since Danny had never been to the ocean) as salt water and a real and true beach, but Sam enjoyed it no matter, as long as they stayed out of the water if it was too cold. Of course, for Danny there was no such thing as too cold anymore. So long as he didn't try and run around naked in the arctic he was pretty sure he'd never die from exposure.

But he could always count on Sam to at least dress appropriately in the little black scrap of nothing that she habitually wore when it was just the two of them. She'd never wear it if Jazz or Tucker were going along, though she didn't care if it was Valerie or his parents. She never went anywhere remotely fun with her parents. So mostly it was just Danny who got to see her in it, which suited him just fine.

So he was patient. The drive to the beach sandy beach on the shores of Lake Michigan that they preferred. Carting the cooler, the chairs, the umbrella. Sam carried her own tote, pitch black with a white skull and crossbones on it that was packed full of her favorite gothic literature (which, he'd learned over the years, was really just particularly angst ridden romance), her sunscreen and whatever tidbits she'd decided were needed. Sometime, if she were feeling especially frisky, she'd even drag a box of condoms, though Danny was somehow sure those were not on the lunch menu today.

And once they were set up, the chairs unfolded, the umbrella spread, and Danny was stripped down and already headed to splash in the water, he glanced back to call to her to join him. And stopped dead in his tracks, nearly tripping in a ditch in the sand as she pulled her over-shirt off to reveal… A black one-piece.

Right. So plan B down the drain, on to plan B dash 2.

And so it went exactly like that. Any time he came up with a plan to get her to admit it to him, to just come out and say it, she was silent and easily sidestepped the plan. And oh, it was hard to come up with those plans because she wasn't like a regular woman. No, he had to work around her quirks and habits and her dietary preferences. He supposed it was lucky that she was such a strict vegan anymore, at any rate, because that would have made one of his final plans completely ineligible.

So when Danny told her he had reservations for dinner, she smiled. And when he asked her to wear the slinky black number he loved on her so, she only smiled again. And when he asked her if she preferred seafood or Italian, she said Italian. Not a word otherwise, just a smile as she came back to him wearing a silky smooth and far from clingy dress, her hair tucked back in a clasp and her face mostly devoid of makeup.

Patience or no, she was stunning, and Danny took her to the small hole in the wall Italian restaurant he'd made reservations at (he was so sure he could predict her response that he hadn't made reservations anywhere else) and said nothing as she picked at her salad and pasta and excused herself to the bathroom overmuch. And then came time for dessert and his final plan of the evening, tiramisu with champagne, and Sam picked at the confection and didn't touch the bubbly drink.

"Sam, is something wrong?" he asked, trying for all the world to sound completely casual and unconcerned. As far as he could tell it worked, but to his ears it fell flat.

She shrugged. "I'm just not very hungry, Danny."

"You haven't touched your champagne," was all he said. She didn't say anything, just fiddled with her fork, and Danny's patience finally ran to and end.

"I said I'd wait, Sam," he murmured as he lay his fork down on the crisply white table cloth. "But I'm tired of waiting. Are you ever going to tell me?"

Her eyes shot to his, startled. "Tell you what?"

"Sam." His voice was patient again, and almost amused. "That you're pregnant."


	88. Words

65

80. Words

**Excerpted from an as yet untitled story.**

The first time Danny said no, it wasn't cowardice that made him say it. It wasn't because he hated ghosts, it wasn't because he wanted to see them eradicated like the GiW was aiming to do. It wasn't because he agreed or disagreed with anyone else, or that he wanted to stay in the shadows and keep his own dubious DNA from coming to light. It had been sheer self-preservation speaking. It had been fear, simple fear for nothing but his own existence, and maybe his friends' lives to an extent. It had never occurred to him that he would only get the one chance, but even if he'd known he wasn't sure he could have changed his mind at the time.

The fear was too strong, had been with him for too long, for him to suddenly embrace his ghost half and reveal the true nature of Danny Phantom to his family.

So now he was trapped between a rock and a hard place as nearly every ghost he'd ever fought joined together in an attack on him just outside of Casper High. It had started… not long ago—it couldn't be that long ago, but he was damned if he couldn't keep finding the energy to defend himself, fight off the attacks. He was damned anyway if anyone had half a brain. It wasn't like it would be hard to figure out that the moment Danny Fenton disappeared Danny Phantom showed up.

Of course, it was days like these that Danny wondered if anyone in Amity Park had even half a brain.

Of course, it was days like these that Danny Fenton wished that Danny Phantom didn't exist, because he was hurting. No, he was _hurt_. There was no faking the red blood that now mingled with his green ectoplasm, or the calculated force they used on him. Skulker especially, who looked like he was enjoying it rather too much. Except that… Every time the metallic suited ghost would close in with Danny he would offer the boy a choice:

"It can all end, child. You need only join us and fight the humans, and this will all stop."

The answer was the same every time, whether he spoke it or merely threw a punch at the metallic ghost. "No; you're asking too much. I have a live to live." Just as Danny'd told Skulker the first time he was asked, the second time, and it wasn't going to change.

It couldn't change, Danny Phantom was a wanted ghost—the only ghost that the GiW still hadn't touched for more than a heartbeat. There were no records of experiments for Phantom, but Danny knew that at least every ghost surrounding him now had been taken. Not forever, no, and sometimes not further than a few violently stolen samples. In fact, there was only one that Danny knew without a doubt who'd stayed with the GiW for more than a day, locked away securely in a research lab until the GiW thought to use him as bait.

Skulker.

Given what Tucker had managed to hack out of the government controlled facility, Danny wasn't sure he could blame the ghost for wanting Phantom on his side so badly. He'd seen what had been done, he knew that the Skulker would rather die than leave his battle suit, knew that the marks were permanent and that forever meant something completely different to a ghost that had existed for centuries and would continue to do so until something else destroyed him. No, he wasn't sure at all that he could blame Skulker.

But it didn't stop the hurting, didn't stop the bleeding, the ache between his shoulders where someone—he thought it had been Kitty, or maybe Johnny's Shadow—had managed to rake a piece of metal between his should blades. There had been bad fights before, fights where losing was the only ending, but at least then he'd always managed to figure out _how_ to lose, usually with life and limb intact and no real danger. Of course, those times he'd had help. Sam and Tucker, almost always. The only other time had been Pariah, and all of his help was now fighting against him, and up here in the air his friends couldn't reach him, and even down there on the ground, they couldn't dare because it was Casper High and _no one _could be stupid enough not to add one and one and not get two.

He cried out as he ducked Eragon and found himself driven down, steel and violent energy burning into his side. He'd made a mistake, and it was going to cost him, Danny realized. He'd avoided the dragon and not paid attention and now Skulker had him and oh—this was going to hurt.

He hit the ground with enough force to break bone. His arm, and nothing else, he hoped, but the air was driven from his lungs already and Danny couldn't cry out, couldn't yell or scream or anything. He could hear Sam in the distance, she was screaming. And Tucker cursing at someone as he tried to break free of the line of students. Danny's vision was dark and murky but clearing a little as he stared up with eyes that were suddenly blue.

Skulker was there, kneeling and looking more sober than Danny had ever seen him. He tried to reach up to the ghost, one hand trying to form an ectoblast as the other laid across broken ground uselessly. Skulker only seized his wrist and forced it down, shaking his head as Danny felt the rings of light start at his waist and begin to travel.

"Welcome to the resistance, Ghost Child."

xXx

Severely cut down, but there, I updated. For Cori, because I promised.


	89. Stripes

65

49. Stripes

Sam scowled fiercely as she brushed at the sand sticking to her freshly sunblocked legs. "If I weren't a better person I'd really do some damage to her," she grumbled as Danny handed her a towel.

"You'd be better off just wiping it all off and reapplying," he suggested. He glanced towards the water out of the corner of his eye, not missing the smug way Paulina and Star were dipping their toes into it before dancing back. It was a show designed to grab attention from anyone and everyone, though Danny knew that one wanted Dash's and the other was hoping for Danny Phantom to magically appear.

Sam jerked the towel out of his hands and he turned all of his attention back to her. "What?" he asked as he half-jokingly looked at his fingers for friction burn.

"You could save your Paulina-gawking for when I'm not sitting here trying to clean off her nastiness." Sand and sunblock were coating the towel now.

Danny sighed as he patiently took the towel back from her and pulled her legs across his lap, beginning to carefully wipe the sand off. "Wasn't looking at her because I like the sight," he told her matter of factly. "I was thinking that maybe a little revenge was in order."

He glanced up at her and found her watching him with one dark brow gracefully arched. "Revenge?" she asked. "_Now_ you're speaking my language."

xXx

"Oh, you're smooth, Danny" Sam breathed an hour later as they huddled side by side beneath her umbrella, trying to disappear from view so no one would ask about their hysterical laughter.

"I learned from the best," he answered with a wicked grin as he handed her the now mostly empty bottle. "Of course, now I'm dooming you to frying like a lobster."

She shrugged at him before tossing a welcoming smile at Tucker. "I don't mind so much. A little sunburn is well worth it in the name of revenge."

"Revenge?" Tucker asked as he settled himself on the blanket and pulled out his PDA. Then he blinked, adjusted his glasses and looked back up at his two best friends. "Revenge. Right. Spill."

Sam started snickering as Danny picked up the empty bottle and turned it, and his hand, invisible, with barely a thought. "Revenge," he said happily as Sam collapsed back, laughing outright now.

Tucker arched an eyebrow at them then followed Sam's pointing finger to see Paulina, dead asleep facedown on her towel, with a massive crosshatching in thick white goop across her back.

"Ooh," Tucker drew out with a smile that matched Danny's. "Revenge. Wow. I can't wait until Monday morning."

xXx

Paulina, understandably, did not attend school on Monday. Or Tuesday, or Wednesday. She only showed up on Thursday when threatened to lose her place on the cheerleading squad.

She spent the morning in a long sleeved sweater until forced to remove it for gym class.

Aloe based cream to treat Sam's sunburn: 12

Sunblock wasted on revenge: 7

Film for three cameras: 36

Seeing Paulina with a tanned in pattern? Oh, so priceless.


	90. In the Storm

65

96. In the Storm

'It was a dark and stormy night' is the usual way to begin tales of heroes and death defying heroics. In truth, it's just a night, no darker than any other when this hero ventures out to his own brand of heroics. There is nothing daring about it, nothing extraordinary other than the fact that he's half ghost. But then, Danny Fenton has never been an ordinary hero. In fact, at this moment, he's a very desperate hero.

Sam is missing, and it's like a piece of himself has disappeared and left a gaping, aching hole inside of him. Worse yet, because she's so… She'll kill him if she ever finds out he thinks of her as delicate and fragile. Maybe he can school himself to thinking that she just needs to be protected—the typical caveman response of a lover, husband, father-to-be.

She's just hit seven months, and the fear tightens in his gut, wild and uncontrollable. They've all been looking for her since Danny realized she was gone, taken as she left a doctor's appointment. And she was gone; gone, gone and not even the tracking device that Danny insisted she carry was working. Which means someone's found it and disarmed it, or it simply won't work wherever it is.

The Ghost Zone; they all know it even if no one wanted to say it aloud. Danny's already combed the Ghost Zone as best he can, and now they're all reduced to patrolling Amity Park impatiently. He's never seen his sister like this, she's beside herself, and Tucker's eyes are glued to his PDA, which isn't really a PDA anymore. It's been so customized that it's more like a hand held computer, fully capable of doing almost anything that Tucker can think of to ask it to do—and if it isn't he makes it.

They're on the other side of town when Tucker yelps in surprise and tells them, "The tracker's back, she's in the park." Danny can practically see the wheels in his head turning as he tries to think up a reason why the tracker hasn't worked, and what he can do to make it better.

But he ignores it and silently scoops his friend and sister up, daring to edge towards his higher speeds to get to her faster. He can feel their hearts pounding and their breath being ripped form the lungs with the wind of their passage, but Danny doesn't care. He only cares about the park, and that he can almost see it, and now he can, and now he's slowed to let Tucker point the way with a worried face.

She's there, lying on her side and curled in around herself. It strikes Danny as so wrong that she is, because she hasn't been able to do that since she was five months along. The baby always got in the way, pronounced on her slim, petite frame, and making everything awkward for her. It's then that he sees the blood, and his stomach roils against the sudden understanding. Tucker is cursing and Jazz is silent and pale, and Sam is crying, her hands wrapped around herself as he drops to his knees.

"D-Danny?" Her voice is shaking and that hurts him almost as much as the way her hands splay across her belly, instead of curving around what should have been there. "They said—" She stops, swallows against the tears and her eyes unfocus for a moment. "They said that one of you was enough, they couldn't have another one running around."

Then she starts crying in earnest, and Danny imagines he hears accusations in her voice. He remembers, once, when someone had asked him what he would be when he grew up.

He was sixteen that day, and he never did answer it to his guidance counselor's satisfaction. He can clearly remember that in the end he barely even spoke when he gave the halfhearted evasion. At sixteen he was old enough to know better than to try and fool himself, much less anyone else. Growing up was a luxury Danny Fenton had forfeited the day he went up against the Lunch Lady when he was a freshman.

He can remember telling Sam and Tucker about it later that day, in between ghosts and thermoses and scrapes and bruises. He can remember the laughter that his melancholy tone had been met with, Sam's laughter, clear as a bell in the cool evening air. They were just sixteen, and she promised that all he had to be was a hero. Just a hero, for as long as he could.

"One day I'll lose," he'd pointed out soberly, and she'd only smiled sweetly and told him that the hero always wins.

Danny had only wrapped an arm around her shoulders and sent a glaring eye at Tucker when he pulled out his PDA. "Yeah. Ever wonder why that is?"

Oh, such a loaded question, and none of the three of them had ever answered it. But now, ten years later, he can answer it easily. The words are safely there, ready to trip off of his tongue as he's kneeling beside his wife. He doesn't care about the blood, only that she hurts, and that he hurts, and he pulls her close. The day has come, he's finally failed, and he knows why the hero must always win.

Because, in the end, he has the most to lose.


	91. Heal

83. Heal

"_Sam, we need to talk."_

Sam could say it easily: she was a better actress than most, even if she was only saying it to herself. There was no conceit in the mental acknowledgement, no pride or pleasure. Just… relief, and regret, and fear. So much fear that sometimes she could barely breathe for it, and no one to confide in. Who could she turn to? Tucker or Jazz? They… might understand, she supposed. But that wasn't a sure thing.

And Danny… Oh, no. Sam had never wanted to tell him. It was _her_ secret, _her_ burden to bear. It was bad enough that it had been done; how could she tell him what his aborted future had scarred her with?

The hand on her shoulder had her ducking away, and Sam caught the hurt look on Danny's face, the selfsame expression she'd worked so hard to keep from him since they were fourteen. Three years. Three horrible, painful, unbelievably long years. She needed therapy.

"Did I do something wrong, Sam?"

It was three steps around to the other side of his bed before Sam paused, pretending to look at some of the souvenirs Danny had brought back with him two days ago. Graphics of space, a pilot's logbook, a picture of him floating in null-G. "How could you do something wrong?" she asked him. "You didn't do anything."

It was too quick and Sam willed herself not to turn around and see how he took it. Looking at him was so hard, too hard. She'd known for more than a year now that the day would come when he would resemble more the ghost that had killed them all and so much less the innocent and wonderful boy she'd grown up with. But somehow being put face to face with him wasn't the same as considering it academically. He terrified her, and no matter what Sam did she couldn't stop it.

"Sam."

"Please, don't, Danny," she breathed. Sam's eyes closed against tears as she wrapped her arms around herself. It was so much easier to pretend that the truth wasn't real if he didn't speak, if she didn't look.

"I'm not stupid, Sam," he breathed into her ear, and she jumped, bit down on a shriek that threatened to overwhelm her at his sudden closeness. He was standing in the bed—she hadn't even heard him move.

He reached out to her and Sam cowered, hating herself as she did, cringing back into the wall and closing her eyes as his fingers touched her cheek gently. "I'm not stupid, Sam. I've already had this conversation with Jazz and Tucker. I know exactly what I look like, exactly what I sound like." His hand drifted down and Danny stepped back so he was safely distant from her on the other side of the bed, legs fully solid again.

Sam took a breath.

"It was Tucker that told me," Danny said to her. Sam bit her lip, hating her fear, her silence. It condemned him and she knew he didn't deserve that.

"I—" she started, but stopped. There wasn't any easy way to say it, no gentle way to build to it. She settled for the smallest truth and hoped that he would believe. "You scare me," she admitted, not even hinting at the why.

"I scare you," he whispered back, eyes gone dull as he watched her.

Sam glanced up and then back down. Even now she was too scared to offer him comfort, too frightened to give words of understanding. "You look like him." The words slipped out of her mouth unbidden, broken sounding. "You look like him and I keep seeing him—"

She stopped, hands over her mouth and heart in her throat as Danny's dark blue eyes homed in on her face. "You keep seeing him _what_, Sam?" There was steel in his voice, and for a moment Sam found herself thrown back to the night before she died when she was fourteen.

There was dirt, rocks, she could feel them digging into her back, and his hand cold on her skin as she screamed and fought. It shouldn't hurt after three years, but Sam could swear it was like he was back, like he was there, hurting her again. She whimpered once and knew that it wasn't real. It was just so… so vivid. So painfully _there_ that she almost screamed with it.

"Sam." Danny's voice came to her from miles away as she forced her eyes open again to see him.

It was cruel, unimaginably so. He'd been gone for two months. Just two, short months, and he'd changed so much. If Sam had been able to laugh, she might have. Space camp, astronaut training, Danny's dream coming to life even as he became the creature out of her nightmares. As tall as the monster now, almost as broad in the shoulders—it was obvious that he'd been dealing with ghosts while he was in Alabama and Florida. She could see it in the way he moved, the new shape to his body.

"Don't touch me," she pleaded as he started towards her again. He paused, one leg intangible and inside his bed, the other solid next to. "Please don't, Danny. I'm sorry, just give me time and it'll be easier."

"Easier," he echoed, voice suddenly lower than before. "I know what he did to them, Sam," he told her. "I know what Jazz and Tucker went through. They both told me within a week of stopping him." So careful never to name _him_, she thought. So careful because the only name they could ever give him was still Danny's.

"You've never told me. Why?"

She breathed in once, the memory of pain sharp inside her, the raptured bliss he'd worn flitting across her mind like a breeze. It was right there, on the cusp of her reality, the one thing that Sam had wanted most in the world forever tainted by twenty minutes' cruel work. If it had been Danny, if she'd been asked… Even at fourteen Sam knew she had been in love with him, that she would have given herself to him in a heartbeat if only he'd asked.

And instead, it had been taken by force, taken by someone she might have loved, in a different future. It _hurt_, so much, and it didn't ever seem to stop.

Tears streaked Sam's face as she looked at Danny, and he looked right back. It helped, some, she thought, that he didn't walk away, that he didn't doubt her. He understood, accepted, that something had happened, that something horrible had happened. But that didn't mean it would be any easier for him to hear it than for her to say it. For her to deal with it.

"He knocked Jazz out so she wouldn't interfere with his plans, and Tucker he beat up a little," Sam said softly, eyes drifting away from Danny's. "Me…. Me he raped. And I never told anyone because… Because I wanted you to heal. I just never thought that I never would."


	92. Starvation

79. Starvation

To say Sam Manson was aware that her fiancé was attractive might very well have been the most understated statement in Amity Park. She knew perfectly well that he was; she'd shared his bed for more than five years. But Sam was also in a uniquely embarrassing situation that tended to drive the knowledge home on a regular (by which she meant hourly) basis, because Sam Manson spent her days surrounded by hormonal teenagers.

It certainly wasn't a situation she'd ever thought she would be in. not that she disdained teaching as a profession, or teachers in general, but there had always been some piece of Sam that screamed "POLITICS!" in loud capital words. A part that Sam was quite happy to indulge from time to time now, but tended more to sit back as Sam molded the rebelling teenaged minds that came through her class every day.

She was, much to her smug pleasure, one of the most popular teachers at Casper. She was still young enough to relate to the kids, and she was pretty enough to be accepted by preps and jocks alike, and intelligent enough to make the rounds of geekdom and nerdhood with equal ease. She always came to class with a little surprise on her desk—an apple one day, some grapes the next, a book of Keats the third—and she always made a small fuss over it without pressing who had given it. Too clearly she could remember how awkward high school had been, and she didn't want to embarrass the kids.

Certainly it was easier to influence intelligent minds than let them recreate Paulina's and Dash's.

But today was another one of those days where she just knew it was going to shoved into her face one more time, because centered in the middle of her desk was a black velvet box that Sam just _knew_ wasn't from one of her fourth period students. For one, none of them had ever even tried to give her jewelry, and for two, that box was from one of the most recognizable jewelers in the city. Not to mention that all the boys in their seats were guffawing at her and the girls were trying to hide their little romantic swoons.

For that, there was only one explanation: Danny had been there. Again.

With a faint sigh of exasperation Sam picked up the box and carefully flipped the lid up. Any annoyance at losing her class's focus was entirely gone as she looked at the small diamond and sapphire earrings that lay on the velvet, and the tiny note tucked inside of the lid.

_You have something old and something new, something borrowed, and now something blue._

In less than a heartbeat she'd forgotten she was even in a classroom as she touched the earrings with a finger, biting her lip to try and keep from crying. Danny had known how Sam had planned to wear her grandmother's favorite earrings at the wedding—the very same earrings she herself had been married in, a gift from her own husband-to-be. But Sam's grandmother had passed away over the summer and had been buried wearing the earrings, just as she should have been. And now Danny had given her this—Was it any wonder why she loved him?

"Did anyone see who left this?" she asked her class, her voice barely shaking as she smiled.

In the second row her most promising poet, Gillian, raised her hand. "It was your fiancé, Ms. Manson." Sam almost laughed at the grin on the girl's face, because Danny did seem to have a habit of leaving her gifts while she was taking lunch. "He was gone before the bell rang."

And Sam herself had been late back from lunch, helping one of her seniors who'd looked lost as he headed to his next class. Too nervous over the approaching midterms, even if he was a solid B student. Sam sighed and started to sit the box down, and then she noticed a slip of paper where the box had been. It hadn't been there before.

_Haven't seen you in days—come see me now._

No attempt at neatness, just his messy scrawl and dropped there out of invisibility, no doubt. The sneaky little ghost. But sneaky or not, it was true. Between his ghost hunts, his actual job, and hers… Oh, she missed him. Her eyes shot up to the clock as she tried to gauge the time, and then she simply dropped the box on her desk and crumpled the slip of note into her hand as she pointed at the board.

"Journal work, there's your topic, I'll be right back."

The tittering voices that followed her out into the hall were thick with gossip, but Sam honestly didn't care. Even the most disciplinarian teacher she worked with could hardly blame her for going after her fiancé to thank him for such a lovely gift. She simply would neglect to mention that she dragged him into a closet and necked like they were sixteen. (Though Sam was _positive_ that none of her female coworkers—and two male—would blame her for that, either.)

All of Sam's plans were thrown out of her head as two cold arms wrapped around her from behind and dragged her, gasping and twisting to look, through a wall and into a the selfsame closet Sam had been mentally plotting Danny into.

"I missed you," was all she heard before his mouth covered hers, tongue pressing for entrance like a man starved. She sighed as his hands slid along her thighs to lift her up, wrapping her legs around his waist as she kissed him. Then his hands kept sliding up.

"Danny, we can't do this here, this is where I work. It's a _school_," she breathed against his neck.

She felt more than heard him chuckle. "Tell me you think we'll get caught."

Her only answer was silence, and when Danny took it as her yes, Sam had never been more grateful than ever that she preferred skirts to pants.

(Incidentally, it took Sam twenty-three minutes—_after_ being pushed up against the wall and ravished beyond belief—to get back to her classroom. It took considerably less time for the catcalls to start up, and only a slightly less amount for Sam to find a mirror in her desk and eyeball the hickey Danny left on her neck.)

(Danny, on the other hand, was stuck in the closet for almost an hour trying to find her panties. He spent a lot longer sleeping on the couch in the face of Sam's mortified wrath.)

xXx

Oh my god! Is that like, a happy ending?? Mark your calendars, people! (Think of it as penance because you probably won't get another nice one till the last two.)

**Also, I'm giving away drabbles at my deviantArt—link's in my bio.**


	93. Eyes

37. Eyes

If ever there had been a nightmare she never wanted to live again, it was the return of the monster. And yet here she was, shivering and shaking as she slipped out of the Specter Speeder and into the dark confines of Clockwork's castle. There was no warning when he came, and he tore through Amity with a vengeance. Four years locked away, out of space, out of time, out of everything—it had completely broken the ghost's mind and turned his eyes towards vengeance for ruining his once glorious takeover of the future.

Her boots scraped on stone but the door was silent as she closed it behind her. The fear ate at her. She could remember so easily what had happened the last time she'd seen him, both of them, and of the time before that. Like Tucker and Jazz and the others at the Nasty Burger the day that fate was changed, Sam had never remembered dying, or being saved, or anything that had happened.

But she could remember the night before, of screaming and begging beneath the monster. He'd laughed at her, taunted her—made a mockery of her hope that Danny would come and save her. But she'd known from the moment he revealed himself that there would be no savior, no saving. The Danny she knew was trapped somewhere ten years in the future, hunted by Valerie, possibly (probably) dead.

She'd been so grateful that he wasn't, even if it made her life harder. It had been so hard, so very hard to hide what _he'd_ done to her.

And now he was back, breaking the fragile peace she and Danny had managed, the careful friendship they'd kept. The love that she'd buried behind the wake of silver-white flames and blood red eyes, cold clawed hands and cruelty. He'd erupted from the Ghost Zone in a wave of sickly red light—Danny never had a chance against the ghost's insanity.

Jack and Maddie were gone, one hanging near death in the ICU and the other trapped by the confines of multiple casts. For all that she was nimble, Maddie hadn't been able to escape _his_ attacks, as angry and violent as they were. He'd struck at her like he'd never been her son. Jazz was there with them, the runner between the rooms to keep Maddie apprised and, because there was no way the woman could forget that her son was kidnapped, sedated when she tried to escape.

All that was left was Sam and Tucker and Valerie, and neither of them had condoned a rescue mission. Clockwork was gone. None of them knew where to, or if he was even truly dead now. All they knew was that the escape was impossible to foresee with the thermos hidden out of sight and time as it was. Tucker and Valerie even now were sleeping off the drug she had carefully slipped into their food to force them to sleep while she found her way through the frighteningly empty Ghost Zone to the castle of the Time Master.

And here she was now, still cowering just inside, fear screaming through her veins and turning her blood to ice as she smelled the thick copper tang of blood. She'd waited too long—Danny was hurt, and badly if the scent was this thick.

"I've been waiting for you, dearest Sam," the cold voice drawled, echoing eerily through the silent clockwork castle.

Four years later and the memory of his voice could send her to tremors: the actuality of it had darkness shading her eyes for a moment before Sam forced herself off the wall, eyes darting around as though the monster would come flying at her through the walls. Her hands clutched at the cold stone wall before she let go and followed the only path she knew, the archway that would lead her straight to Clockwork's main demesne and the windows wherein he watched as time passed him.

Oh, yes. _Watched._ There was no way that the ectoplasm that smattered the machine wasn't Clockwork's, and no chance that the ghost would willingly leave his staff laying in a puddle of it.

She turned, instinctively looking to the dark alcove where the thermos has rested for four years. She didn't know what she was expecting, but whatever it was, it wasn't what Sam got. Stone shattered out, yes, he had escaped with the same violence and fury he'd descended on them all in. but light, and somehow there were only shadows left of it in her memory as she struggled to understand what she was seeing before her.

Red. Black and red and deep, deep blood, pale skin without color and blank, empty blue eyes.

"Oh," she breathed as saw him, her mind finally telling her it was Danny, her Danny, her savior and not-savior, lying there in a sticky pool of his own blood. Where there was skin it was clean, perhaps a few handprints, but clean. It was then that Sam understood what her mind had just said. _Where there was skin._

She turned her head to the side, collapsing to her knees and retching painfully as she understood that there wasn't much left on him, that _the monster_ had flayed Danny alive, that Danny was (oh, god, please, god, no, please) gone, there was no hope for him. Her throat was tight, burning as she tried dragging herself to her feet, half crawling, half stumbling to the ruined archway and using it to drag herself upright.

"Oh, Danny," she whispered, closing her eyes against the gore for a moment. She'd waited too long, she'd been too late, and there would be no chance for him as there had been for her.

"He thought you'd save him, you know." The voice was cold, close, right next to her ear. Sam jerked away and into the jagged stone, too frightened to even wince, much less cry out, as pieces scraped along her shirt and pierced through into her skin, so violent was her attempt to escape.

The monster's hand reached out to clamp down on her arm, shoving her more firmly into the wall. Sam did wince now and fancied that his nostrils flared as the scent of her blood came fresh over the cloying smell of Danny's.

"He was sure you'd come for him…that you'd do something to help him. He screamed for you…" The forked tongue flicked out at her, then up to lave along his blood-streaked cheek as he smirked. "At first. Then he just screamed."

She closed her eyes and whimpered, hands clutching at her skirt before she was suddenly pushed off balance. Her arms pin wheeled, her back scraped along the stone to leave bits of skin grasping there, but she couldn't stop it. Sam's knees hit the still spreading blood with a bruising thud as she pitched forward along her side. It was on her, from knee to shoulder, her hair in the thick of it and her cheek suddenly cold on the blood covered floor next to Danny.

She was close enough to see the damage in exquisite detail, from the way the skin still on his body was frayed at the edges from being ripped, to the damage down the front of his chest where claws had obviously been raked. His throat was missing, and Sam scrambled back, to frightened and sick to actually be sick, no matter what she was staring at.

His legs were solid against her back and in the heartbeat after ramming herself into them, Sam had already scrambled back forward, trapped between Danny's past and future, a vivid, macabre nightmare that she couldn't escape from. He reached for her and Sam flinched back, nearly screaming when her hand touched what was left of Danny as she fled from the twisted, nightmarish Danny of the future. Her breathing was shallow and Sam began to think that she might pass out, and then there would be no chance for her to escape back to the human world.

"It reminded me of you, dear, sweet, Sam," he smirked at her as he leaned forward, claws reaching for her. This time when Sam flinched back again she couldn't care in the least that she was touching a corpse, or that it was the remains of the boy she was in love with. All she could think about was _not_ being touched by the creature who had forced himself on her four years before.

"Don't touch me," she gasped as she pushed farther back, forcing the body to move with a sick, slurping sound as it lifted from the blood.

The monster laughed and Sam shuddered. "He said the very same thing to me, girl. Begged me not to touch you, threatened to kill me if I took my pleasure of you again." He paused and scowled and Sam took a hard look at him as she realized that he wasn't without damage. Whatever had happened after he'd taken Danny, Danny had not gone without a fight. There were rips in his uniform, and the Phantom symbol Danny had born with pride was missing.

A glance back showed the scrap of black tight in one of Danny's hands, and she laughed, choked, painful and grief-stricken, but so much pride welled inside her. He hadn't gone down without a fight, and neither would she. She had the strength to end it, to stop him. She had to, because if she didn't…

"Before he died I told him what I'm going to do to you," the creature told her conversationally, and Sam's eyes narrowed as her hand ghosted over her side to the pocket in her skirt.

Before _he_ could move, could even understand what Sam was doing, she had the slim Fenton Lipstick in her hand, uncapped and prepped. Words of bravado rose and fell inside of her mind as she shoved it up into his groin, and for once Sam didn't shudder at the touch of his body, didn't cringe back in fright. Instead, she pressed the trigger.

And didn't let go.

Bright white-green light roared out of the small weapon, and as Sam shielded her eyes she thanked any and every god she could think of that Jack and Maddie had made the tiny thing so powerful. He screamed, and Sam nearly screamed with him. No matter the changes, no matter that there were pieces of Vlad and Plasmius in him, Sam could still hear Danny under all of it, and she knew that these were the screams he'd made as the monster from his future had flayed him alive before tearing out his throat and silencing him forever. When it was done tears streaked her face, and all that was left of Danny's murderer was steaming ectoplasm, a scrap of cape, a piece of glove.

She sat back, heedless of the blood, ectoplasm, the myriad kinds of death around her, staring at nothing.

She was still there when Tucker and Valerie found her.

xXx

**Yes, this is kind of a continuation of **_**Heal**_**, though I think it can stand alone if need be. Sorry for the evil.**


	94. Multitasking

64. Multitasking

"What are you doing here, Ember?" Sam all but growled when the blue haired ghost stepped through her living room wall. Her hands were full of flour and chicken but it didn't stop her from dropping the coated meat to reach for the ectogun hidden nearest her.

The ghost raised her hands to ward Sam off, flaming hair much shorter than Sam had ever seen it barring the failed attempt to take over the world when she'd been a freshman. But that had been a good fifteen years ago, and Sam couldn't think of why the ghosts' power would be broken right now. Unless…

"Look, I don't wanna barge in—"

"Too late for that," Sam muttered as she flicked the safety off the gun.

"I just wanna make sure your little man plays fair!" Ember shot out. "He comes barreling in where he doesn't belong and _look at my hair_!!"

Sam simply arched an eyebrow. "Ember, you were plotting to take over the world. Again. Don't you think that it's time you adjusted your own tactics?" The blue-haired ghost growled and started a lunge that was brought up short by a piece of raw chicken to her face and the brandished ectogun.

"Wouldn't if I were you," Sam told her in an almost singsong voice. "I may be against violence and eating meat, but things can completely change when there's a kid in the house."

Ember sniffed at Sam, eyes narrow and unfriendly. "Your little podling is at school. There's already someone on their way to collect him. Even up the odds, you know?"

For the space of a moment Sam's heart stilled and her gut went cold, but she knew that if there was any danger Danny was already hanging around Jack's classroom waiting to escort the unwanted ghosts forcibly away. He'd gotten loads better with tactics since Jack had been born; he'd be expecting an attempt on little Jack if he just broke another plot. She almost sighed in annoyance. Really, if they were going to take over the world, couldn't they come up with something new?

"I don't think so, Ember," Sam said almost cheerily, completely at odds with the menacing look on her face. The ectogun fired once, low enough that ember ducked into it when she tried to avoid the shot instinctively. Two seconds later Sam was around the counter, her hand casually scooping a thermos from a hook on the side before she uncapped it and pointed it at the ghost.

"Next time you guys should really just stick with Danny. He's more merciful."

There was a click, a whir, and then the thermos was erupting in blinding blue light. Ember had just enough time to see the dark-haired woman clear the counter, to take in the soft curve of her belly, before cursing and being sucked into the thermos. Sam didn't even pause before sitting the thermos on the counter with a ghost-jarring thud and going back to her cooking.

xXx

"Jack's washing his hands, he'll be down in a minute," Danny said from behind her about two second before she felt warm arms slide around her to rest on top of the baby. "How're my girls doing?"

Sam hmmm'd in her throat as she finished her salad and bumped Danny back with her hip. "Anything you want to tell me?" she asked, a sweet smile stretching her lips.

Danny immediately paled, having been on the receiving end of that look far too often to trust it. "…No?"

Sam just looked at him as she poured the dressing over the salad. "If you say so." She paused for a moment to let him think he was safe and then tossed out casually, "Ember's in the thermos on the counter. Could you try and convince her to be a little more intelligent the next time she tries to rule the world?"

The immediate apology and confession—in that order—nearly made Sam lose her cool demeanor to laugh in his face. Still trying to protect her, but she couldn't blame him. He had a very strong sense of caveman in him, and it only got worse when she was pregnant. She remembered all too vividly the threats she had to make the last month of carrying little Jack when he wouldn't even let her out the door to water her own damned garden.

"Alright! Alright, you're forgiven," she told him as she dropped the bowl of salad in his hands. "Take it to the table, check under Jack's nails and make sure he actually scrubbed them this time. And tell him no more frogs at the table, too."

The chicken was done and as much as she hated the thought of eating meat, much less cooking and serving it to anyone, her family was full of carnivores—from husband to son to every odd pet Jack brought home. Including Cujo. (Would she never be rid of that damned dog? All he did was chew on her shoes.) And the beans were ready and she needed to get Jack's milk—

Warm arms slid around her waist again, and this time the baby was ignored. "Have I told you today how amazing you are? You get Jackie taken care of, cook, garden, shop, and even manage to kick ghost ass. I love you."

Sam chuckled as he pressed a kiss to her neck. "I am woman, hear me multitask."

xXx

**Six to go...**


	95. Dark

4. Dark

Danny jerked out the nightmare, nostrils flaring to the expected acrid medicinal scent of the room. It was always disorienting for him to wake up like this to the darkness, but he thought he was beginning to get used to it. Already, only a minute after his body had danced upright in terror, he knew that he wasn't in the hospital anymore, that the scents and sounds around him where the sounds of home and family.

Already he knew that the sounds around him were of failure.

Failure was something he was learning to live with. Three weeks, and it was wrapped around him like his own breath. It was inside of him, too, fueling dreams that were twisted and wrong, where everyone near and dear to him died. It hadn't happened, he knew that, but it still felt so real. Nothing felt right now and Danny didn't know how to get it back.

His head ached, his eyes ached, short stabbing pains just behind them. His stomach was beginning to growl, but he didn't want to try the stairs or face his family. But he was thirsty. A drink of water could be a start.

Sitting up was the easy part—he already was. To the right side of the bed, up and three steps forward, one to the left, then forward again. Clear space, door open, he could smell whatever his mom was cooking. No, wait, that was Jazz, because it actually smelled edible. Pause to rub at his eyes where they ached, gingerly because they were still tender.

And forward again, one, two, the—wall.

It hurt, oh, did it hurt. He could already feel blood welling in his nose and the aching in his head was worse now. And his eyes burned, tears trying to spring to life and completely unable.

"Danny?" Jazz's voice was quiet and gentle, much like her hands as they found his arm, smoothed across his face as he turned blind eyes to her. "You shouldn't be up yet, you know you're still healing."

"I don't need your help, Jazz," he muttered as blood started seeping from his nose. There was another burst of pain as she shoved a tissue against it, and he tried to glare at her but let it go, knowing he failed at that, too.

"Everyone needs help sometimes," she said softly as she pulled him to his feet.

Danny jerked away from her, stumbling back to his bed and miraculously making it. "I don't need help. I can do this," he rasped out. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, harder and harder, ignoring the pain, waiting and hoping for sparks of light to dance behind his lids. But there was nothing; it was just dark there.


	96. Drink

78. Drink

He wondered if Sam had any idea what she'd done to him. It just couldn't be possible that she knew and was doing it anyway. Hurt too much to think that Sam cared so little for him. And yet… She had asked him, the need to fool her parents into complacency, to stop throwing their blue-blood toys at her. And he'd agreed, he'd gone along, he went over and above the call of duty.

Danny'd never thought that there was anything Sam could do to hurt him. He was wrong.

How fucking ironic that all she had to do to break him down into little pieces was to tell the truth. Careless words from a careless friend, and he was left behind feeling dead and broken, everything inside of him was twisted about and damaged. The truth in the face of everything he had done, everything he would do for her. After all, wasn't he the one who'd spent the last three months being torn slowly in half because he didn't dare tell her that everything had been so real for him?

Every kiss, every casual touch, every single whispered nothing _meant_ something to him.

But not to her. Never to her.

If he could still feel Danny was sure he'd be bleeding slowly to death. It had all meant the world to him and he, oh, such a fool, had thought it might mean something to her. Even just a little, hoped that she could care for him the way he did for her. Because she smiled at him, she kissed him when she didn't have to, never changed the way she acted even when there was no audience to perform for.

Lies. It was all lies, wrong suppositions, a terrible, terrible mistake. He'd just been grasping at straws, dragging himself to something that didn't exist, a drink of water in the middle of a desert: an impossibility. She was his entire world—he wasn't in hers. It meant nothing to her, _he_ meant nothing to her, and no matter how many times he stumbled over the words, the meanings, the feelings—it never changed.

It hurt. It _hurt_. But he had to say it, if only to himself. She used him.

And the truly sad thing was that he'd known it all along.


	97. Deep in Thought

52. Deep in Thought

If anyone had told me back when we were kids, that one day I'd be fighting ghosts with my best friends, I probably would have told them that they needed serious help. Ghosts don't exist, I only just met Tucker and Danny yesterday, and honestly, where do you get these ideas?

And then life happened.

It's kind of strange how it does. I mean, it's really my fault that Danny is what he is. It was me that sent him into the first Ghost Portal in the Fenton's basement, and it was definitely me who sent him into it again. I could have probably found a way out of it all, to let me and Danny and Tucker all be normal. But then, what is normal, exactly? No, I mean it.

When you look at it, normal is just an illusion. Social norms tend to anything but what people want to call normal. You have preps and businessmen doing drugs, students from the ghetto who bust their asses for a chance at a real life, people from everywhere in the world living around the corner and trying to be more patriotic than the ones next door. It's the norm for divorce, for unwed teenage mothers, for orphans and abuse, and any one of a hundred things that are bad, or terrible, or simply not good.

And then there's us. The most unlikely of friends, the most unlikely of heroes.

Me, yeah, spoiled little rich girl from up-city. Tucker, who would probably marry his PDA if he were allowed to. Legally anyway, because let's face it, that's a long-term relationship if ever there was one. And Danny. A self-centered teenager whose only thought was being popular thrown into a life where suddenly he's sacrificing everything he's ever wanted for people who absolutely hate him.

Pretty strange, huh? But not to us.

I think it'd be more strange for us not to be as we are, not to do what we do. Sure, there's plenty of people out there perfectly capable of doing what we do. Danny's parents are prime examples of that. Wait, scratch that. Danny's mom is the perfect example. His dad? Not so much. Genius, sure, but that particular genius errs on the side of insanity. Not that Mrs. Fenton is much better, but when push comes to shove, she can just kick ass. I suppose Mr. Fenton can, too, but it doesn't happen so often, and even Tucker is a better shot that he is.

But anyway, that's not my point. My point is still that I wouldn't have believed anyone if they'd told me this when I was a kid.which is probably why I'm sitting here scribbling this note right now. In case we don't come back this time. Yeah, this time, because this isn't the first time we've headed into certain danger, or even the first time where we've known the odds of dying are much better than living.

One of us probably going to die this time. It might very well be me. I hope not, because I'm afraid that if I die, then we all will. But if there's a way for all of us to come back, I know Danny will find it. I know him, I know what he can do. I trust him. I know he scares the hell out of you, I really do. He scares me, too. But he scares me in a good way.


	98. Tower

54. Tower

"Jack, Jeremy, don't _touch_ that!" Danny shouted at the boys as his oldest rolled her eyes. "And Lilith, don't roll your eyes at me again tonight. Last warning, or you're not going with your mom on Tuesday."

"But Da-ad," the girl whined, stretching his name into two syllables.

At twelve she was already starting to act too grown up, much to Danny's discomfiture. Sam had just taken the girl shopping for proper bras the weekend before. Not training bras, but real, actual, from the juniors section, _bras_. It made Danny cringe just to think about it, but he knew that even worse was coming. His daughter, and he could admit it with no conceit, was going to stop boys in their tracks. With her long dark hair and eyes that wavered somewhere between her father's icy blue and her mother's deep amethyst… Oh, he was going to be using the Fenton Anti-Creep Stick with extreme prejudice.

"No 'buts' young lady. You want to go to the poetry thing with your mother, you knock it off and help out with your brothers." A crash followed Danny's decree and he winced. "Sorry, I'll, uh, pay for that. Um, replace it?……I'll do something about it, alright Clockwork?"

The ancient ghost waved one hand, the other wrapped firmly around his staff as his form shimmered into a child. "Not to worry, Danny. I've already child-proofed my tower."

Danny laughed faintly, wondering if Clockwork had taken into account that the twins caused trouble wherever they went. "Right, so, I'll be going. Lil will help you or," and he shot a hard glare at the girl, "else. And the twins are still grounded, I don't care what they say. There are no ghost powers for any reason, _especially_ invisibility."

Clockwork smiled at Danny and Danny sighed. "Yeah, I know you know, and I know we all know that I know. So now that we know, I'm heading back home. Sam's waiting. Thanks for taking them."

The last came out in a desperate way, which was why Clockwork had suggested the children spend the night in his tower. Lilith had been enough of a handful, considering how headstrong she was, but the Fenton twins had broken all the records to be had in mischief making and property damage. Eight years old and Danny and Sam already had the police out to their house at least once a week with one accusation or another.

To be fair, neither Jack nor Jeremy ever repeated the same mistake twice. No, once the boys were told not to do something specific (so long as it didn't relate to their own inherited ghost powers) they never did it again. They were just… inventive.

"Go on, Danny, your wife is waiting for you." Clockwork put enough twist to the words that Danny's lips quirked up in a pleased smirk, already having a pretty good idea of what waited for him at home. The only question was if the man would have the energy to enjoy his wife, or even the other way around. It seemed that they'd been short on sleep and long on hours since Lilith was conceived thirteen years before.

Danny bolted and Clockwork smiled again, already certain that the evening would go well. Then there was a crash, and he heard one of the twins' yelp, and Lilith's annoyed screeching, and Clockwork closed his eyes. Child proofing had been the easy part, but perhaps he'd been hasty to not consider twin-proofing his tower.


	99. Food

87. Food

It wasn't unusual for three teenagers to be awake at the same time in the wee hours of a Tuesday morning. In fact, it was downright normal, though most teenagers still awake at two am are still playing online or rushing to finish an assignment or trying to get one long study session done in the hopes of passing a test they've known about for weeks and just now started to study for. But the key word here was normal, and Danny, Tucker and Sam were anything _but_ normal.

At the moment the three friends could be found cramming themselves into Sam's imported eco-friendly car. Car was stretching it, according to Danny and Tucker, since sometime between the beginning of the junior year and this fine March morning they had added inches to their height. Sam was now the odd one out (never odd man, because the one time Tucker had used the phrase on her she had kicked his shins so soundly that it had hurt to wear socks for days) since she hadn't put on much in the way of height.

It was a never-ending source of annoyance for her, that she was the one who ate healthy, who exercised, who took care of her body. And yet they were the gangly six-foot-three giants on their diet of meat, bread, and more meat. Or just meat, on Tucker's part.

"Oh my god, my stomach is eating my backbone," Danny moaned as he wedged himself into the passenger seat, dramatically clutching his stomach.

Sam just snickered as she pulled onto the empty street, pointedly driving past the Burger King that had sprung up in place of the Nasty Burger. It had gone skyward one night in their sophomore year, someone forgetting to check the temperature of the Nasty Sauce before leaving for the night. No one had been hurt though the company went bankrupt from the insurance claims—too much property damage from flying debris. Now, in it's place, was the more mundane fast food joint.

"You sound just like Tucker, you know that, right?" she asked with a superior glance at him.

"Hey!" Tucker yelped indignantly from where he was curled up in the backseat. "That's not fair! I'm a growing boy!"

"Growing?" Sam muttered. "You're like the jolly fucking green giant."

Danny snickered as tucker kicked the back of his seat. "At least I have an excuse," he pointed out, his sleeve falling back to expose the bruising along his arm from his latest ghost fight, the very thing that had the three of them wandering about instead of studying or sleeping. "Ghost fighting is hungry work."

Tucker growled and Sam laughed as she drove past yet another neon flashing sign. "Sam, please, I beg of you: _food!_"

Silence reigned for a moment as they came up on the last open fast food place before they headed into the more residential neighborhoods where the three lived. Danny's eyes latched onto the neon bell twenty yards away. "Sam, please," he whimpered pitifully.

How was Sam supposed to resist it?

Twelve minutes later Danny and Tucker were sharing four bags back and forth between the front seat and the back half of Sam's car as she drove on in disgust. Tucker had already downed two burritos and three tacos while Danny savored his more slowly.

"Thank god for fourthmeal."


	100. Teamwork

41. Teamwork

It wasn't how he wanted to find out, Danny knew. To float through the wall of their apartment to an empty home and a dozen pamphlets on abortion littering the coffee table—he hadn't even known she was pregnant. And now he didn't even know if she still was.

Danny's gut clenched as he wondered where his wife was, and wished that he'd never opened his mouth to her about children. It had been amazing for Tucker and Jazz to announce that they were expecting. Surprising, since they'd only been married for six months, and Danny and Sam had been together for nearly five years, married for three, with no children in sight yet. But when Sam asked if they were ever going to have some little Sam's and Danny's of their own… Oh, he could have said anything but what he did.

"_I haven't really thought about it," he said with a shrug. "I don't think it's important right now. Kids will just get in the way of out plans."_

Never mind that the plans halfway revolved around a future for the children. Getting the Portal and Ghost Zone under control (he was thisclose) and finding a house that could be made to accommodate babies with ghost DNA.

It had sounded selfish, callous, but he hadn't _meant_ it.

But that didn't change the fact that he was sitting here staring at all sorts of ways to kill his son. His daughter. His child. All of Sam's prolife rallies came to mind, but he didn't think he could even begin comparing them to this. He'd hurt her so badly, if she was considering it. So very badly if she might go against everything she believed in without even telling him. He hated himself in that moment.

A key slid into the lock and Danny tensed, turning to see Sam letting herself in to the apartment.

"Sam," he breathed, looking at her hard, as if he'd be able to tell what she'd done, what she hadn't done. "Why didn't you tell me?"

The startled look on her face faded into one of resigned acceptance. "You already told me how you felt about it," she whispered, not moving from the door. "You don't want kids. I didn't need to ask again."

He went to her, hands clutching at her arms, pulling her close. "I didn't mean it like that, Sam. I swear I didn't. I didn't know you were pregnant."

"Would that have changed anything?" she asked, violet eyes staring up at him steadily.

"Sam," he pleaded. "Of course it would. You… Did you?"

She looked up at him and shook her head. "I'd never do something like that without talking to you first, Danny," her voice broke as she said it.

He'd hurt her again, but he already was on his knees, face pressed to her stomach. "I'm sorry, Sam," he breathed against the cotton of her shirt. "I'm a terrible husband. I'm sorry, I'll be better I swear."

A gentle hand stroked through his hair and he looked up at her, blue eyes dark and worried. "We're a team, Sam. You and me, a team. I'll be better, I swear."

"I know," she breathed as she leaned down to press her lips against his forehead.


	101. BONUS: Daring Heroics

Daring Heroics

**Casper High**

**Vice Principal's Office, 12:35pm, Edward Lancer**

The day had begun much like any other for Edward Lancer. He'd risen early, arrived to the school early, and started antagonizing his students early. There was so much potential wasted in high school, he'd seen it time and time again from his own trip through; it killed him every time he failed to reach a student he could be so much more and just let it go for the momentary pleasures of being a teenager. He'd already handed out a handful of detentions—two of them to Daniel Fenton, by far the greatest disappointment of his teaching career—by the time lunch rolled around to ruin the rest of his day.

Two of his best athletes (though it pained him to know they were far from his best students) had decided to try and rough up one of his better students at second period lunch, and now he was in the middle of trying to impress upon them that what they'd done was wrong. Unfortunately they seemed to have been hit on the gridiron too many times, because Lancer was having a very hard time making them understand why it was a bad idea to beat up the geeks when one was in high school.

"Mr. Davis, Mr. Feeney. Sit _down_," he ordered as they tried to get up and leave again, thinking that their place in the food chain would get them off with a warning, or possibly not even that. Lancer shook his head. "You nearly broke Mr. Michelson's nose. At the very least, he will have a black eye."

Mark Davis stared at him blankly, as if trying to ask Lancer again what, exactly, it was that they'd done wrong. Tom Sweeney, however, wasn't even bothering to look interested and was instead playing with the edge of his letterman's jacket, the cotton frayed from what appeared to be regular habit. Lancer imagined that the boy did it in class whenever he didn't want to pay attention. Then he stiffened behind his desk painfully as he realized that 'whenever' might very well be every moment between entering and exiting his classrooms.

"I could suspend the both of you," he said flatly, mouth tight and eyes hard.

_That_ got their attention, and both seniors were up on their feet protesting before Lancer had time to blink. One was shoving his frayed letter jacket forward, as if the large C with its neat row of football pins would save him, and the other looked almost dangerously close to actually threatening Lancer. He ignored the implications from both as he rose, for once the bulk he carried looking imposing as he stared them down until they found their seats again.

"You should be thankful that it's not in my power to expel you. Yet." Lancer bit the word harshly knowing that the threat of expulsion was the worst thing the two could hear at the moment, given how they had reacted to mere suspension. At the least there would be detentions, and it suspension wasn't approved Lancer would make sure they spent the time from now until Christmas trapped for hours every day after school in a classroom.

Mark shifted in his newfound seat. "We were just having some fun, Mr. Lancer. Honest."

Lancer narrowed his eyes. "Your _fun_ caused bodily harm to one my students. That alone is enough reason to have you removed from the football team. More than that, you're going to be brought up at a suspension board—I will _not_ allow students to assault each other in my school!"

Lancer thumped his fist as he let his final say out, and the crack of hand against wood was drowned out by the heavy snap of brick of wood to his left. Lancer stumbled back, body on automatic as he registered the floating apparition in the suddenly open wall, and a glowing blue shield beyond it.

The ghost smiled narrowly, green flames licking up his silvered metal skull. "Humans," he said derisively. "I'm here for Danny Phantom."

**Chemistry Lab, 12:38pm, Tucker Foley**

The shaking of the building was a foreign feeling as Tucker glanced around, looking for the trouble he instinctively knew was there. It was the downside to senior year, not sharing all or even most of his classes with Danny and Sam. But while Tucker had breezed through anything related to technology, he'd neglected a few necessities for graduation—one being chemistry. Trouble here, and he was trapped in a room full of things that could kill him in a variety of ways. The other students, too, but Tucker had long since decided that thinking of himself in dangerous situations wasn't a bad thing.

So when the ghost attack alarm flickered to life, brilliant orange strobes flashing from over the lab's door, Tucker wasn't surprised like everyone else. Neither was Tucker surprised when the doorway itself went dark and the temperature in the room began to drop. One or more ghosts, there was no way of knowing until they showed themselves.

If Danny had been here he might have known if his friend had a chance to tell him. But Danny wasn't here, he'd finished his chemistry requirement last spring and the lucky bastard was off playing with frogs and Sam in biology. Tucker was alone, he had to wait.

Then again, waiting might not have been the answer.

Despite the now freezing temperatures coming from the doorway Tucker was disgusted to see some of his fellow students racing toward it, heedless of the danger there. "Stop!" he shouted as he surged up and over his lab table. A beaker tilted and spilt, but Tucker ignored it without a second thought. It was only water with a bit of chlorine in it, not dangerous at all in a puddle on the black surface.

A girl named Karen was first to the doorway, and Tucker knew he was too late as her hands stretched out in front of her, short hair swinging carelessly in the moments before she impacted into the barrier that shouldn't have been there. There was silence for a moment, Tucker thought he could hear his blood rushing through the veins of his head, and then there was a loud crack as Karen was tossed up, the force of whatever was blocking the door sending her into the ceiling with bone breaking force. The tiles shuddered, some broke and others fell, and then the girl herself came down on one of the lab tables, breaking half the beakers there and splashing her with undiluted chlorine.

When she convulsed, crying out as it reddened her skin with tiny blisters where it touched, Tucker breathed a sigh of relief. She was alive. Thank god. He was already halfway to her before anyone else moved again, and she was crying when he reached her side. One of her legs was folded awkwardly beneath her, but she hadn't noticed yet.

"Oh god, I can't see, I can't see, my eyes, I'm blind," she was whimpering, but Tucker skidded to his knees next to her with his hoodie already have tugged off to wipe her burnt skin, dap at the blood dripping across her face from her hair.

"No, no, it's just blood," he told her. "Open your eyes, you can see. Come on, we have to make the windows."

It was the last thing he said before the entire lab shook with the force of the windows imploding.

**Gymnasium, 12:40pm, Dash Baxter**

Gym was the easiest class Dash had ever taken, and he'd made sure that it was always on his class schedule. An easy A on every report card, something he desperately needed since he rarely managed to scrape straight C's otherwise. Even bullying the nerds into doing his homework and projects backfired, since he'd been caught out during sophomore year using that technique to try and pass algebra. He'd been failed and forced to take it again. It had been the worst semester of his life.

But gym? Oh yeah, so easy.

His routine was always the same—Dash hadn't actually participated since he'd hit high school. Coach Tetslaff was always more than happy to let him use it as a chance to get an extra workout in, or turning a blind eye if he wanted to practice his other techniques. He'd perfected his use of the swirlie in gym, so the class was even more dear to him than the easy A made it.

The first ten minutes of class was always a warm up, strictly adhered to since a pulled muscle could easily bench him for a game or more. That wasn't an acceptable option since he had to be the best, and to be the best he had to play every game, catch every ball, make every throw count. Careful stretches, twisting and turning, a few minutes worth of slow jogging in place to make everything loose and limber.

Then two miles on the track, or twenty laps around the basketball court. Today was going to be a lap day since the sky had been dark and foreboding from the moment he'd crawled out of bed. No sense in risking a cold that could cost him valuable play time.

It was easy for him, so damned easy. Twenty laps done and gone in the blink of an eye while the fat kid he'd wedgied in the bathroom before class started huffed and wheezed on his fourth go around the gymnasium. Dash snickered as he slowed down and stopped, his own breathing still easy and his body ready to respond to anything he asked it to do.

Today, he'd butt in on the already begun game of basketball.

The ball was on the other end of the court but Dash didn't have to watch and wait for long before it hit the court only a few feet away from him. He darted out and grabbed it, laughing cruelly as he pushed out a foot and made a petite girl with glasses trip and scrape her knee with friction against the smooth wood. She didn't even protest as she jerked away from him, pulling herself to her feet and limping off the court to sit in a corner, examining her wound and sending baleful stares his way.

Dash only gloated as he set himself up for an easy basket, shooting the ball up and—it hung in the air without moving. Dash glared at it. "What the hell is the idea?" he shouted.

Before Dash had finished his accusation the ball came flying back at him with jarring force. He ducked just in time, the kid behind him not so lucky. Michael Shanks, defense, second string. He went down like a sack of lead and Dash only shook his head as he turned back the now materializing ghost in front of him. He stalked forward, bravado and adrenaline running high making him braver than was safe.

"Dude, what the hell? This is _my_ turf."

The ghost gasped a chuckle that reeked of rotten flesh. Dash didn't have time to gag against the stench before the ghost had reached out with a clawed hand to yank him off of his feet. The cold ground into his wrist and Dash began screaming as one bone cracked, and then another.

"Pitiful human," it rasped. "This is ours now. Give us the Phantom."

**Lunchroom, 12:43pm, Paulina Sanchez**

Paulina had spent the first three years of high school trying to juggle her schedule into third lunch. It was by far the best place for a girl like her to be, since she was the most popular girl in the school and deserved to have her best slaves fawning over her. Popular and beautiful and undoubtedly the best thing to happen to Casper High since Danny Phantom appeared. Paulina sighed, resting her chin in a hand, taking care to make sure that the lines of her body and neck were as attractive as she could want.

"What's wrong, Paulina?" Amber asked, eyes glued to the girl and a fawning smile plastered to her face. Just another shadow in the long line of Paulina Sanchez wannabe's. Paulina could barely keep her disdain from her face.

"Nothing you would understand," she said. "It's been weeks since I've seen Phantom!" Another sigh, this one more melodramatic than the first.

She'd maintained that she was the only girl for the ghost boy since freshman year. Now at the beginning of her senior year, she still hadn't managed to get the ghost to float still for long enough to tell him that he was her boyfriend. Not that it would last; once she had him in her grasp she'd keep him hanging on just long enough so that she'd always be famous, and then she'd let the ghost go. Maybe in a really dramatic fashion, like letting herself get attacked by one of his enemies. Yeah, that would work.

What passed for a brain in her head began processing her half formed idea as she stared out the windows and at the courtyard. It would be the smartest thing she'd ever done, because then she wouldn't even have to come up with a reason to break up with the ghost boy. If he thought she was in danger from all the other ghosts, then he'd let her go and she could play at the faithful human who loved him. It would be headlines for months, and maybe she could get to LA and talk someone into making a movie.

_Paulina Sanchez in…_

Her imagination failed her there and Paulina blinked away the thought. For the first time since she'd looked out onto it, Paulina actually saw the courtyard as it was. There were students, which was to be expected. Even this far north the late September day was still warm and vaguely sunny, even if the sky looked like it was thinking of opening up a deluge. It wasn't at all unusual for half of the lunch period to be out there whiling away their half hour of midday freedom, cruising about on skateboards (then racing away from whichever teacher demanded said skateboard), the drama geeks reciting strange plays, the chess club trying to stop whichever jocks had third lunch from destroying their games and boards.

But there were too many students out there, and there were teachers, too. Paulina sat up straighter as she stared. Blood. There was blood, and wasn't that Star over there by Mr. Felluca? And oh, _dio_, Mr. Felucca was missing part of his ear, and Star's hair was singed short, and that geek was limping.

Paulina jerked out of her seat pointing out the window, thoughts of center stage and popularity shoved from her thoughts as she stood. "Someone, oh, _dios mio_, call nine-one-one!"

As if she had turned a switch, the students in the cafeteria surged to the windows to stare and gasp and retch at this injury, that bloody whatever, and to scream as they realized on the far side where _ghosts_. If any of them had been quicker they might have escaped, but none of them realized that the rising roar from behind them was anything but other students. As the first turned to look strips of raw meat began shooting into the crowd, binding, gagging and strangling whoever they landed on.

Behind them was a ghost, a lunchroom lady, and her eyes gleamed red as she pointed and sharp edged dishes began shooting towards them. Paulina tried to scream but it was cut off as a pork chop shoved its way into her mouth and halfway down her throat, gagging her and bringing her to her knees as she tried to pull it out.

The only thing that she could think was, _Where is Danny Phantom?_

**Biology Classroom, 12:45pm, Danny Fenton**

His ghost sense had been going off all day, and Danny was honestly beginning to get sick of it. For the first two periods he'd tried running for the bathroom every time it happened, but since he had Lancer second period and the man had given him a week's worth of detention, Danny wasn't much inclined to keep trying that particular trick. So he'd fudged it left and right, using any and everything he could to get out of class for a few minutes at a time during third period.

And it had been nothing but a waste of time, all that detention for more than a dozen false alarms.

By the time lunch had come around Danny was content to sit tight until something actually happened. Especially since he and Sam both had second lunch splitting biology in two. Not that Sam was easy company today, since they were dissecting frogs and Sam had no way out. If she refused like she'd done for three years running, she'd fail the class and fail to graduate. Oh, was she pissed. She'd ranted the first half of lunch and spent the second half trying to figure out if the ghosts were playing tricks on him or if his ghost sense was just off.

A discreet test had proved everything else was in working order, so they decided it was the ghosts and Danny had told her to let it go. He'd stay alert and when something happened he'd be ready. Well, as ready as he could be with a thin string of frog intestines in one hand and a scalpel in the other. He glanced up from the insides of his frog to see Sam across the room. She was green in the face and trying to let her partner do most of the work, but the girl she was relying on was having even bigger problems, squealing every time the scalpel touched the dead frog's viscera.

Sam was actually cutting the poor creature up, and Danny was sure she was about to cry. Failing grade or not, he did detest that they were making her do this. She was smarter than anyone in the class, probably including the teacher. Theoretical knowledge of dissection practices should have sufficed for the only student with a ninety-nine percent average in the class.

He was about to dive back in, scalpel ready and other hand freshly empty, when the room shook and his tray with the frog in it skittered to the side of the table, teetering for a moment before he saved it. Across the room Sam's eyes darted to his and Danny shook his head. His ghost sense had been utterly silent, so to speak, there was no reason for him to try and exit when the teacher was already on her way out the door, the order of, "Scalpels down," echoing as she hurried into the hall.

No one moved even though Danny desperately wanted to cross the room and consult with Sam. Ghost sense or no, his skin was crawling, and Danny didn't have a clue why. Just that something bad was happening, that something was terribly wrong, and that he really needed to do something. But until a ghost showed up, he was trapped as Danny Fenton, a regular high school student who wasn't special, noticeable (unless you were a bully), or anything but clueless.

"There's been an accident in the chemistry lab," was the first thing Ms. Lewis said as she came back into the room, worry on her face. "I want you all to start cleaning up your stations in case we have to evacuate the wing."

There was the ting of metal against pan, the hurried scraping of frog parts being dumped back into their bodies, and then Danny startled away from his tray as the frog twitched. Then it did more than twitch, one leg curling completely, and then the screaming started. It lasted for a few moments before the lights overhead began flickering, and students began running for the door and the dubious safety of the hallway.

Danny looked around, bewildered as his ghost sense started coming through thick and visible, a cold racking up his spine as he breathed it out, not daring to move. He was the logical target and the rest of the class was to the doors and pouring out of the room. The floor shook beneath his feet and Danny found Sam's eyes again, no words said as the tile between them broke in an eruption upward, a grayish ghost forming from the crack and cackling at him hungrily.

He had only a second to realize that he was the only one left on this side of the classroom before the room began to shred itself to pieces around him. He was screaming Sam's name when he fell, and only stopped when he was buried by half a classroom.

**Trigonometry Classroom, 12:48pm, Valerie Gray**

Something was horribly wrong, and Valerie knew it. She didn't need any of her special equipment present to know that it was ghost related. She lived in Amity Park for heaven's sake; _anything_ strange (and she did mean anything) was a ghost's fault, right up to the fact that she still hadn't captured Danny Phantom and taken her revenge on him for ruining her life three years ago. Never mind that three years ago the girl she had been wouldn't have been in her shoes now: ready to graduate in the top fifty of her class, honed to physical perfection, and already accepted into three of the best Parapsychology programs in the country.

But if Mr. Johnson wanted to delude himself into thinking that the room hadn't shook like crazy ten minutes ago, he was the only one who could. Especially since they'd heard the screams, too. But no one was allowed out of the classroom, he was insistent on teaching them cosines and Valerie was ready to chew her textbook in half with the desperate need to get out and help!

Another minute passed and the room began shaking again, this time the screams from somewhere above them, and the board at the front of the room shook itself off the wall as a horrible crash was heard. The screaming upstairs stopped and Valerie took the moment to grab her bag and prepare to flee the room. A familiar laugh cut through the room a moment later, and the graphing calculators on every desk lifted into the air before splitting into dozens of pieces and swirling about the entire class.

She didn't dare move for a moment as she realized that Technus had obligingly brought himself to the classroom, and her eyes narrowed. It was a decision, one that she had to make now. Valerie weighed her options, the most obvious being to stop having a secret identity and share with the entire class that she was the Red Huntress. An unfortunate side effect of doing the right thing, but as Technus floated through the front of the classroom she gritted her teeth and prepared to make the change.

"Not so fast, little girl," he cackled, and she took a startled step bad as he darted for her, hauling her into the air so that her weight dangled from one arm.

She could still change, she still had to, but before she could even begin the sequence to cover her body in her technosuit Valerie was thrown into a wall. Her head hit sharply and she lay there for a moment, dazed, Technus' voice only vague and nasally as she didn't move.

"We can do this two way, human," he explained, his superior tone grating on her nerves even with her body uncooperative with her orders. "The easy, which means you walk yourselves into the center of the school with the rest of the sheep."

She tried to pull herself to her feet, only making her knees as she tried to roll her eyes. Always the same old Technus, spouting his plans out and giving her the chance to stop him in his tracks before he did any actual (more) damage. Wouldn't have him any other way.

"Or the hard way."

She screamed, the sensation wracking itself up her arm and pouring pain over her before Valerie even realized that the ghost had grabbed her hand and wrenched her index finger back to lay flat along her hand.

"These," there was another snap and she lost her knees, collapsing against the ghost so that she was only supported by his icy grip on her wrist, "are your choices you little meatsacks." Another snap and Valerie retched with the pain. "The hard way," oh _god_ it hurt when he snapped her pinky to the side, "will be _your_ fingers you disgusting humans."

When he wrenched her hand around, Valerie knew that for everyone else, it would only be the easy way.

**Second Floor Hall, 12:50pm, Sam Manson**

She hadn't cried in a long time, not since Danny had almost died the summer before sophomore year, but Sam couldn't seem to stop crying now. the ghost that had done it was long gone, nothing else but sending Danny to his death, buried under what had to be tons of concrete and brick and all sorts of strange school things and dead frog bits and scalpels and oh—

He was _gone_.

She felt so stupid. He'd asked her for help at lunch and Sam had so readily agreed with him that it was a bunch of mischievous ghosts looking to test Danny Phantom. And she'd been wrong, she'd helped them kill him.

One of her classmates brushed against her and Sam stumbled to the side, finally sinking to her knees and pressing her face against them, the denim of her jeans soaking through quickly as she wished for her best friend back. It was disloyal to Tucker, but nothing would be the same without Danny, without Phantom, and Sam felt like a piece of her had died inside, breaking away and just gone in a flash of dust and him screaming her name.

A gentle hand on her shoulder made her look up, tear-streaked face miserable, pitiful as she found Tucker huddled near her. "Sam, we have to get Danny. The ghosts are taking over the school."

He was covered in tiny cuts, his beret missing and one lens of his glasses cracked. She saw glass littering his hair, and a line of shards standing up out of the bottom of his right forearm, like they were imbedded in the bone along the length of it. His brow was creased and worried, and Sam found a moment's pity for her other best friend, who had searched her out, knowing that where she was Danny would be close. Well, she thought cynically, he wasn't wrong.

She was right here; Danny was one story below her, broken and dead.

She shook her head, fresh tears burning their way down her cheeks. "Ghosts _have_ taken over the school, Tuck." Her eyes strayed to the gaping expanse where the biology classroom had been not five minutes before. "He's gone. Oh Tuck, he's gone. He was in there when it happened."

Tucker glanced to his left and his dark skin went ashen as he realized what Sam was saying. "No," he breathed, but she could see that he already knew, it was just a desperate wish that she was wrong crossing his lips.

His good arm went around her and Sam leaned into it, ignoring the other students, the noise now pouring in from everywhere in Casper High, the shimmering blue shield between them and the rest of the world. It didn't matter, none of it mattered without Danny there. he was the only one who could save them, and without Danny Phantom, there would be no savior. Not even the Fenton's were as good at what Danny did, and they'd been hunting ghosts for years before Danny got his powers. Such a unique situation to force such expertise into his hands.

Sam shuddered out a sob as the familiar metal face of Skulker suddenly loomed clear in front of them. He reached out and batted two students between him and her and Tucker away, and Sam skittered back in fear, knowing that the metal against flesh had held the sound of breaking bones. Tucker threw himself between her and Skulker, and she shrieked when the metallic ghost didn't even pause as he stole up both her and her friend.

"Let me go!" she cried, twisting around. "You already killed him, let me go!" Tears were falling freely and the bastard only laughed at her.

"Spoils of war," he decreed, and turned to the cowering students. "All of you, down with the rest. _Now._"

**Front Hall, 12:53pm, June Ishiyama**

It was a completely breakdown of discipline, but Ishiyama couldn't think of a way to stop it. In less than fifteen minutes she'd watched her school go from structured, safe and organized, to a hell of blood and broken children. For all that many of them were on the cusp of adulthood, not a single one of them was more than a child now in her eyes. It gnawed at her like the fear she was trying to hide. She was the principal, she was in charge, and she couldn't keep her students safe.

Every single precaution they'd taken, all of the money poured into anti-ghost defenses, people more reputable than the Fenton's, people who should have been reliable. Ishiyama shook her head as she moved quietly through a pair of students from the gathering at the edges of the front hall to the unconscious form of Valerie Gray.

She should have trusted the two ghost hunters. They'd offered to arm the school for free, but after everything she'd seen about them she'd been too afraid of potential lawsuits against the district to accept. And now their son was dead, and a third of the student body was injured. Most not as bad as the unconscious woman-child at her feet. Ishiyama knelt and glanced over the semi-splint someone had wrapped around the palm of her hand and down her wrist.

It was a mess, what the ghost had done, and it would take hours of delicate surgery and months of physical therapy if Valerie was to regain the use of her hand.

It sickened Ishiyama, the nausea in her gut only building as she searched through more of her students. There were broken bones everywhere, blood from cuts of all shapes and sizes. But no more as severe as the maiming Valerie had suffered. At the moment Ishiyama was inclined to thank god, but she wasn't sure he would hear her, and she wasn't sure if she should.

They were just _children_.

The barrier that had been erected around the school gleamed from all sides, barely filtering the dreary sunlight. No one was coming in, and no one was going out. she hadn't even seen any of the ghosts attempt to breach it, though the woman knew that didn't mean they couldn't. at worst a piece merely needed to be dropped to allow the ghosts access back and forth. Her thoughts ceased as Ishiyama turned to see a shadow fall across the students gathered in Casper High's courtyard.

"Give us Phantom and you all shall live," came the decree. It was no ghost that Ishiyama recognized, but she admitted readily to herself that she hardly knew the ghosts that frequented the city. She tried to avoid them.

She was too far away to stop it, and one of the students screamed as the ghost sent a ball of icy cold ectoplasm at him when he tried to tell the creature that they didn't know where Phantom was.

But the cry was taken up by the dozens of ghosts surrounding them, the call, the bloodthirsty demand for Danny Phantom in exchange for a lifetime of slavery instead of a painful death. No choice at all, she knew, and wished not for the first time that she had retired like she'd been offered. But no, one last year as principal of Amity Park's only high school, one last chance to preside over the students, to the graduating class of the first students to survive Casper High with the advent of ghosts and Danny Phantom.

There were screams, but there was no stopping them. The ghosts were far too excited at the fear and pain filling the air, thick enough that even the human Ishiyama could taste it on the back of her tongue. She wanted to scream at them to stop, but was too afraid to do it, fear that they'd kill the children outright strong as she quivered where she stood.

_Give us Danny Phantom. Give us Phantom. GIVE US THE PHANTOM!_

There was no way to do it, and she would have if she'd had the ghost boy in her grasp. Handed him over to stop them from hurting the students, the children.

And then it was done, the ghosts cowering up into the air as the silver visage of one of the few ghosts Ishiyama knew floating proudly above the crowd. He had two students dangling in his grasp, and she recognized them easily. Tucker Foley, streaked in blood and defiant, and Sam Manson, face streaked with tears and looking lost. After a moment Ishiyama remembered that the Fenton boy had been their friend.

Then the ghost spoke: "Phantom is dead. It's our time now."

**Courtyard, 12:55pm, Danny Phantom**

"Son of a _bitch_," Danny groaned as he shifted another piece of concrete from atop him. He'd have been dead if it hadn't been for those damned stools and a single cabinet. But he wasn't, and he was conscious again.

It was time to get a little payback and deal with the ghost who'd done this.

He was shaken, bruised and bloodied, but whole. Even if he had been afraid for his first few moments of consciousness that his arm had been broken, and then his back. Thank god he'd realized that he could feel everything, and the pain he'd expected was simply not there. safe and sound he was, and he really needed to find Sam and Tucker and make sure they were okay before he dealt with the ghost.

As he climbed to the top of the rubble Danny's eyes went wide as he surveyed the destruction round him. Half of the science wing was collapsed, and the front of the main hall was missing. He could see Lancer's desk and office, empty and looking like no one had died there. smoke rose from behind the main body of the school, and when he glanced behind him he saw a blue ghost shield glinting against the sky.

"_Vlad,"_ he growled, as he saw the small metal box that lay along its base.

If Vlad was involved, then he needed to tread carefully. Taking the shield down would tell the old man that he was on to him, so Danny left it and half slid, half stumbled down to the first floor hallway. He listed to the silence before realizing that towards the main entrance there was the dull smell of fear and the sound of crying, random screams, and voices he recognized begging for someone to stop, anything, just please don't hurt them.

Stealth aside Danny took to his heels, racing for the light filled hall, only stumbling to a halt when he turned the corner to see the entire student body cowering inside the courtyard. And Skulker, a name that he suddenly spat inside his head, presiding over it all, ghosts ringing him from above. His heart clenched as he saw Sam and Tucker on the ground beneath him, Tucker obviously hurt and bleeding, and Sam safe looking until she looked up at the metallic ghost and Danny could see the blood that streaked her forehead, the way her arm didn't move from where she cradled it to her chest.

He watched for a moment before deciding it wasn't broken, just dislocated, and that barring the way he was decorated with questionable jewelry made of glass, Tucker was better off than many of the other students. But the looks on their face were halfway to broken, and Sam had been crying. Her red rimmed eyes gave it away, and there was nothing that would stop Danny now.

The ghosts were gloating as he took another step forward, still shadowed by the wall, listening as they mocked the students. Some were pleading with the ghosts to let them go, to not hurt them, more were pleading for Danny Phantom to miraculously appear and save them. And Skulker in the middle of all of it, mocking them and telling them that the Phantom died a coward, screaming and trying to fight his fate.

Danny's blood boiled.

"Your precious Phantom can't save you now, you foolish humans," Skulker boomed.

And Danny only smirked as he strode from the shadows, passing Lancer and Ishiyama where they guarded Valerie's still form, Dash huddled with the rest of the football team, a blotchy Paulina hiding behind her groupies. And to where everyone could see him, Sam and Tucker and ghosts especially.

"I wouldn't say that, Skulker," Danny smirked, the picture of confidence as his fists clenched at his sides and Sam and Tucker both cried out his name. "I can save them; it's what I do."

His eyes came alive with a fierce glee and the world flashed blue-white.

**fini**

**A big thanks to all of my readers, and lo! I am the first to finish the 100 Drabble Challenge!**


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